Betty Branch catalog (6-21-23)) - Flipbook - Page 19
Images of Women
Plaster Caster’s Postpartum Blues
How strong
How infinite — ultimate
It is as if the world
will explode with images
of women
Here, now, a time for all things
a season
Common knowledge
Calling for an uncommon insight
insistent
Suddenly finished —
Installed
“The Public is invited”
The undertaking of a year,
focus for most of the energy,
Fulcrum on which
most ideas turned
Surrogate lovers, children
and friends
After this birthing too
Comes postpartum blues —
Betty Branch, 1978
I awake, there is no urgency
in my rising
I try to substitute the urgency
of frying eggs.
Guilt gets me up,
The staring egg-eyes
see through my façade —
I am exposed.
Do the children miss me
in my not-here-ness?
Or are they only eating eggs —
Bits and Pieces
of me
barely clinging together
flying apart in all directions
clinging like filings
drawn, back together magnetically
Today I fly
Today I fly apart
Depart
Today
Betty Branch, 1978
Betty Branch, 1978
Above: Gaia, 2007, bronze, 15” x 43” x 12”, Collection of Susan and Dr. Paul Frantz
Opposite: Mothers lll, 1984, bronze, 14” h, Collection of Dotsy Clifton
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