P8 - Joanne Hayakawa, Fragile Composition

Joanne Hayakawa
American, b. 1949

Fragile Composititon
1995
Porcelain
Gift of the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation
1996.60

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Fragile Composition
by Taylor Fang

Two holes in the back, the eyes
of the world. And the rivers:
supine, twisting
in jade and dappled oyster,
cracks forming only
at the surface.
They say she is fragile:
the way her neck, like the slender
branch of a tree,
or a wine bottle,
reaches upward.
The way her bones
jut outwards, skin sinking
into pockets
of empty space. Slab of body:
pale, dusted.
Empty, as if waiting
to fill with the sounds of the world,
a distant humming
that echoes in her chest.
Yet still,
I’m reminded
of the lean tendons and wild crest
of a horse, the muscle
of the red earth. Soil
that ripples, smoothed by years
of erosion, shaped
into furrows
by a palm of water.
Clear as the sky
after rain:
shape of the heart
and the fragile vessels
it calls home.