25 October 2024
19 April 1995
unsuccessfully submitted 15 January 2025 for a one week residency at Varuna
submitted to APJ14.2 – ‘unthemed’ 19 April 2025
in lab e
chipper monks in calm battalions
quell fires in a labyrinthine mansion
where Marilyn Monroe keeps showing up
in a tragicomedy about love, delusion, corporate greed
and the hazards of swimming in honey
this is where the blocks of concrete and cheese come in
and the two babies, each in a T-shirt
positioned so the blocks are clearly
visible to them, hint: one of the babies’
T-shirts has its mother’s scent imbued in it
and the other hasn’t – so, which one
will respond first to what might be a place
for a face? and on which block might they see it?
before you answer, consider the sculptor,
Michelangela, mistress of mirrors, what
she thinks when she sees two blocks,
each a cube, three metres across… in the concrete
cube: pietàs, davids, jekylls, hydes, dying slaves,
a Klezmer tapestry unfurling, or
the space where a human body once was before
the concrete set…and the liquid
that’s left of the body…dreams
of life before incarceration, cancellation,
a sculpture reverso, a joint
smoked in twilight, but you say
what about the block of cheese? and which baby
did what? what horrors abound
to which they’ll blithely accede –
the terror of infants laying brain-claims
to the territory of faces, voices, breasts?