|
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
FEATURED WORK
• Many Things Brought from One Climate
to Another to Make a Grouping of Things Not Related
to the Climate at Hand
• The Second-Longest Soda Straw
In The World
Many Things Brought from One Climate to Another to Make a Grouping
of Things Not Related to the Climate at Hand
after an installation by the same name by Jonathan
Monk, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2002
Rattlesnake festivals where
everything is deep-fried or coated
with confectioner’s sugar.
Or both. Silk shantung pillows
whip-stitched and stuffed
in Home Ec. A single school
of razorfish hanging vertically
in the sea like icicle lights
on my porch. Under a palm tree
decorated with vulgar boas
of tinsel, Santa Claus rolls
a cigarette. A dance of elbows
and feet in foreign bathrooms.
You. Me. The delight of thin hairs
on your belly and green beer bottles
multiplying on the counter-top.
top ^
The Second-Longest Soda
Straw in the World
Perfect for a night of sock-hopping, giggling teenagers
who try to balance on a ladder to see how far
they could sip from a glass on the floor. Perfect
for spit-wads in a Trigonometry class. Cosine this.
Sine that. But the second-longest soda straw
in the world hangs in a cave in Tucson: water
still drips from one end, percolates into calcite rings—
less than a millimeter at a time— twenty one feet
and counting. The darkness sweetens with so much
natural furniture: cave pearls, bacon drapery,
the turnip shields—all ready for a silent tenant
to move on in. The brittle tubes could bring you small sips
of fresh water, but stay away from the second-longest one.
You’re not ready for the fragility. Your cheeks will sink
too far. You will remember the world outside
and want to return. You will notice book lice
worrying the floor for bat waste till it looks like
the whole ground is vibrating. But really, you’re just
remembering clips of the garden you left unattended—
the way a hummingbird rockets its tiny heart from flower
to flower, the way the white hibiscus bursts open at night.
top ^
print this page
|