Detail from the Large Work
The way they bring the camera in
and crop three-quarters off. More:
enlarge
the stitches, bringing the single thread
in focus, the stranded,
intended
margin. Until cloth isn't cloth. Pattern's
a cut line, and no sense in
it.
That's how we used to watch a stick
of incense, split into pieces of
what
it wasn't: A bright coal first, orange, strange, sufficient.
The
uncaught gray. Between them a black band, catching.
And two smoke lines--an eye-trick mixup of funnel edges,
white, low,
but rising.
And we would be closeup, close to the little fire,
watching
"everything": ashes in warm air,
high, highest, higher.
That's how we missed whole houses burning.
Cast-Aluminum Espresso Pot
Where one mother cleaned the pot,
scrubbing and boiling
the thing in
ammonia finally, one did not.
One left a light film of coffee on,
as much as would not
come off with
water alone, and some rubbing.
So? What harm would it do?
The pot grew brown over
time: it showed how
a flame threw
heat in a black design from a blue burner
over the years, and how you,
too,
could get away with not having everything silver.
