The girls sit before the assignment—identical <br />blocks of salt—and from tall, precarious stools, <br /> <br />look down into blank planes of possibility. In the end, <br />though, the only choice is to carve something <br /> <br />smaller. So they begin. Rough chunks like hail <br />fall before the rasps and chisels' beveled <br /> <br />edges. Salt permeates this air as it has <br />for years, the floor gritty, their hands, eyes, <br /> <br />even the skylights made opaque with it— <br />disappearing not unlike the way it is <br /> <br />subtracted from similar blocks, in the fields, <br />before the tongues of the horses.<br /><br />Claudia Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/beginning-sculpture-the-subtractive-method/
