print previewback B.K. FISCHER
A small (or large) machine
She busies herself making a machine for
resistance—a clothespin catches a wire
and a hatchet comes down, soundless,
onto the pillow—but she flinches, feels
a need for cliché like a need for cake frosting,
decides meanwhile to build a tripod from
limbs of crepe myrtle, jack pine, bubinga,
pushes the pedal forward a half-turn.
She is suspicious of severe goddesses
of the late Victorian sort, shuns sherbet-
toned Medusas, effervescent tentacles
and yolk. No, not yet: she places a moth
on each saucer, runs narrow-gauge wire
through aluminum, splices circuits so
the butter knife she bolted to a rotary
motor clinks a goblet with each pass.
That will do for now. If she can touch it,
it’s kitsch; if she can hear it, it’s dreck.
She stashes regret behind a breakfront,
but he sees her do it, pretends he only
recommends the amethyst oysters, leans
across her lap to douse the light again. 
The poem takes inspiration from Bobbery, a 2012
collaborative mixed media art exhibition in New Orleans
by artists Christopher Deris and Karoline Schleh.