Inside the machine is another machine which refers to the machine enclosing it. So he touches her hand, and the image of a child emerges.
*
The steel ratchet in the wind: she felt it against her corneas, pressing precisely into the metric eye sockets, turning, tightening.
*
The elevator kept trembling: the mechanism out of key: but the riders held their eyes fixed on the dial, the reassuring arbitrary numbers.
*
Under the hood where gear meshes integer, in the hamster wheel of the heart, a singularity appears, an homunculus, a social security number.
*
Wreckage washed ashore, fragments of fuselage and cowling, seat-backs, oxygen masks, and hermit crabs remade themselves of metal and bone.
*
A rat in the dark attic at midnight, bolt-cutter teeth incising insulation. Black wire, red wire. A spark. The pianist's hands stop playing.
*
The train enters the tunnel, great piston breaches the oily cylinder, clockwork tide is driven to foam on the rocks, and the marriage is over.
Good stuff. I love "the marriage is over" as the closing line. It makes the whole thing pack a more intense emotional punch despite all the mechanical, thinky imagery. Though the mechanical stuff is compelling on its own. I'll be mulling over those hermit crabs for awhile.
ReplyDeleteMulled hermit crabs are pretty tasty.
ReplyDeleteThese are lovely.
ReplyDelete