Two poems by Genevieve Betts
"Operating Theater" and "The Threads"
Operating Theater
—after the artist Barbara Hepworth
Who would choose
to view an operation
for artistic purposes,
to see the body
as moving object,
muse in that state?
I never thought of
my ear surgeon
as sculptor, yet
in a way, he is,
opening me up and
carving into bone,
shaving away to form
the shape he imagines
for my inner ear
like a Hepworth statue
shell-scooped and
cochlear, sutures
stitched across flesh,
pulled tight to close
the bloody expanse.
The Threads —after the sculpture “Spring” by Barbara Hepworth Don’t pluck the threads but pull them like shoe- strings, sew them through the womb, turquoise inside concrete gray like a spherical loom. Let them hold inside what is most precious like that sea-foam gem, black veining the surface like a bridge’s thick cables that can hold real weight— Barnum’s circus animals, a line of semis running late, trains and their freight. Let these lines direct us deeper inside, to both the tangible and slick, ovoid and pinpricked.
From the author:
“I saw an exhibition of Barbara Hepworth's sculptures in Edinburgh about two years ago. Her sculptures reminded me of the inner ear and stitches at the same time I was in need of another ear surgery. Hence, these poems came from that comparison.”
Genevieve Betts is the author of the poetry collections A New Kind of Tongue (FlowerSong Press, 2023) and An Unwalled City (Prolific Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in Sleet Magazine, Hotel Amerika, The Tishman Review, The Literary Review, Cloudbank, Sky Island Journal, and in other journals and anthologies. She is an assistant professor at Santa Fe Community College and teaches for Arcadia University's low-residency MFA program in Glenside, PA.