Markers. Ants. Tectonics. X. & Pain. & Illness.

Example 15

Glen followed his robots around the gallery, although to say he followed them suggests that the robots were moving or that Glen was moving when what was happening instead is that Glen was watching his robots when the reviewer from The Hostel Happenings came in and because I was in between projects at the time I was there too and while the reviewer did her best to engage either Glen or the robots she didn’t start off well when the first robots she crushed under her sensible flat shoes and then gave her foot an extra turn before she realized that she wasn’t stepping on an especially crunchy roach but the very thing she had been sent to observe though she was desperate to explain to Glen as they sat at the only table in the room she hadn’t been told that all the robots were no bigger than grasshoppers though the hoppers she had known back home in Mississippi were no laughing matter ha ha and Glen had looked at her with the level of interest he reserved for his robots when he was waiting for them to do something and since the opening of the show the robots had moved three inches, if you counted the progress of all fifty of them, she wrote in her article that she had felt very uninteresting indeed and that she was all for the Green Movement in art but that Glen had taken it to the level of composting and we were all worried about how Glen might take it but he stayed in the gallery watching the robots though Sheila suggested that robot was a pretty big term for a clockwork bug that reminded her of the first alarm clock she had ever smashed against an early morning wall but these has small bottles on their back, filled with liquid, black or green or blue and even gold and there had been one silver one but the woman from Happenings had finished that one while the rest carried only clear and while they were marvelous in their making and stood up from the ground on thread thin legs springs and gears and in the silence of the gallery I could hear Glen’s breathing and the January drizzle while outside the cars scarred the streets on MacArthur and the sun refused to shine which Glen said mattered his beings being solar powered but I couldn’t see any panels of any sort and the night of the opening approached and I wasn’t sure but that they did move a bit, their legs dragging in the dust on the white painted floor their legs flowing with their ink tracking patterns of veins or limbs or some skein that I wasn’t sure but what I could be imagining it while Glen I was sure sat in the same place and even curled up there his head on its side saying he wanted to be on their level and even on the night itself as the room filled up with people in their gallery best the wine glasses belling out into the room and the clothes rustling and all of the sounds loud after the days of such nothing the whispers in the room of Glen and how this would be his first failure and more wine and I had turned off the fans as Glen had asked me and the sweat pooled under people’s arms and the women laughed and said they glowed, I remember that, a woman saying she was glowing, right before the robots, their ticking gears, their windings springs, their heat formed metals tilted from all the body warmth and on their thread steel legs Glen’s clockworks sprang into the room, twanging, one after another, spattering their liquids across the crowd that to its credit screamed and danced and slapped and from the floor  where he had the best view of the colliding shoes and ankles Glen said well it’s about fucking time.

With Death, Tupelo I.C.U.

We talk of tubing, their curves
Plastic? Rubber? Your touch

Flexible but my skin burns
You. Instead you shout into

My mouth. The echoes we
Watch bounce the lines

On the machines. Monitors.
Motors. We talk of karaoke.

Of the kidney bean plastic
Vomit buckets. Just right.

You twist the EKG snaps
Which too fucks the bouncing

Line of my heart. The nurse
Bunches in. Tells me to quit

Playing around Mr. Vickers.
I’m twenty-four. A new Mr.

We laugh about her. I dare
You. The black cloak arches.

You reach beneath my skin.
How I’m connected by hooks

And eyes. Strings and Wires.
Which you undo. I vomit. Twist.

Then I’m loosed. Roll about.
You shake the hospital bed

To bring the glowing small of me
Up to rest behind my eye.

Then you lean close to me.
Peek-a-boo. We see.

Example 16 : The Repeated Meals

Simon trained us so it was of some surprise when he was the one who tripped me on the order of sole by asking for salmon instead when he damn well knew there wasn’t any salmon or white fish or tuna or catfish for that matter because each dinner on the menu had been planned down to the ounce, half ounce, eighth, sixteenth of all the ingredients from the steak platter with nine point seven five ounces of potatoes and half a pound of filet mignon seasoned with thirteen grains of sea salt and tenderized for four hours and hell it doesn’t really matter the point is that each of the twelve meals was all planned out and not like at a normal restaurant because we were in the Museum in Simon’s constructed rooms that together constituted his latest installation work where we all were trained to repeat our motions and words and to lay out the silverware with the same gentle motions of our arms and the perfect half bend to our knees, in particular, my knees had come under quite some scrutiny from Simon because I’m taller than the other waiter, Melissa, by nearly a foot, and Simon had me bending at the waist and flexing at the knees to lower myself to precisely six inches above Melissa’s as I bent to take the orders and for six days Simon had been eating in the gallery three meals a day with a different critic or friend each day each meal and things had been going splendidly as at night we sat around after the restaurant closed and counted the grains of salt in the shakers so that Simon could pour them on his hand for the critic from his favorite art blog and pulling a small scale from his pocket he told the critic there would be two point three eight grams of salt and there was and then he licked all of it off his hand and together they laughed while Simon told the critic that Gregory, the chef, always salted each dish to perfection and Simon had to destroy perfection and so he made sure to ruin his palate before each meal and the critic got a kick out of that and the quote led the review on the site and Simon seemed very happy and we were all looking forward to the closing meals and it was in the middle of the day when the artificial sun was burning through the rose windows and forming the perfect rhomboid of light on the carpet and I had watched the light crawl through its shapes for the week we had been open and the thirty days of rehearsal mapping itself exactly the same each moment and I was clueless when I came by the table and smiled at Simon and asked what he would like for dinner and Melissa poured the water and the critic from the big glossy magazine showed his teeth and sucked his lips and peered at his own menu while Simon closed his and said to me, I’d really like the fish tonight, but ask Gregory to forget the sole and let’s have salmon, OK? and then he had slapped me on the butt and Melissa had dropped a glass which didn’t shatter on the thick carpet but thumped its ice and water the water darkening to black as it seeped into the carpet and the critic had turned to me and said, you know, that sounds good, me too, please.