(by exchange)

A beast is drawn over and becomes a hairy mess of confused symbols. It may not be evident at first, but the lower left lines of ink are thicker, darker, more concentrated than those drifting into the upper right. A galaxy, an internal galaxy, forms under the auspices of a doodle. A sputtering breast, an eye caught in the swamp of  scattered remains. A three legged rhinoceros with a head that explodes bull shit onto the page. The light feathering brings us into the distance of faint recollection. A dagger of remarks, it moves, and now we are there looking at it from another angle. Guernica. And the lightbulb there dead below the beast. Frizzles.

Out.

And its legs decompose into steel armatures

rusted

and the dry bones of meat

play, embryos.

The carefree line trickles past, a

stream of urine under the beast.

Evidently we are caught up in the sandstorm.

Nostrils, birds, Roald Dahl, eyelashes.

Teeth, diamonds, Keith Haring was here.

The grim face of a cat

laughs

behind

the skeptical mask of our humanity in three dimensions.

And the strokes become us

on stools, a pedestal,

he drew this hunched over his desk

with inky fingertips

smeared onto his face

Untitled c.1994 Gift of Samuel I. Rosenman

(by exchange)

Mira Dayal is an artist, critic, and aspiring curator studying and working out of NYC. Her recent research has focused on the parallel utopias of digital and outer space, the relative transparency of artists’ identities in their work, and the labor of artists. She recently launched a new journal of art criticism (JAC.) for undergraduates, the first in the nation.