ELEVATOR INVENTION

…

Lan­guage-learn­er fear­ful of error as to pro­nounce the Amer­i­cans as part­way back from the dead devoid of the pri­ma­ry sources, phrase in semi­cir­cle, who could tell by the hand­work, lever left by the glass-piece, radi­ance by flex­i­ble curve and grom­met. Safebox at the stroke of twelve, and in the Geor­gian cor­ri­dors by chance, packs of the cata­ton­ic lunge at an impasse, par­lor room sys­temic, medi­um upright, aria into ecto­plasm, new day com­pli­ca­tions on the Octo­ber watch, small indul­gence in favor of the notary.

…

Humanoid spec­i­mens con­nect­ed by tubes in the cab­i­nets sub­merged with the telling of How the Earth, how the morn­ing quad­rant waned, cerulean eddies from the log­book. In the sub­ma­rine breath­ing, appre­hen­sive sibi­lants from the sea fern Hel­veti­ca upend the sea­son­al epi­taph, the liq­uid mis­sive exer­cise in meth­ods to inter­ro­gate the col­ors known to poet­ry of 1810, or by fol­li­cles from the lunar anthem.

…

I wear the geometer’s mon­o­cle when, at the turn of the cen­tu­ry, as from the Iron­works where the Great Illu­sion­ist per­formed the spec­ta­cle of Jupiter and Mars, on dis­play are a hun­dred bolts of hound­stooth, a tinker’s windup key, some knuck­le­bones as from a butch­er, and ben­zene pro­cured from the cor­ner phar­ma­cist, a squadron of half-moon car­riages pulled to the Fac­to­ry, the fat­ed hors­es flogged by pet­ty crim­i­nals along the over­crowd­ed boule­vards so named for the Belle Époque as The Doll Maker’s Dilemma.

…

Helio­cen­ter unsteadi­ly again, effect that out­weighs the imped­i­ment, par­ti­cles of triple fruition from the star clouds in Stal­in­grad to the enzyme [m] dri­ven muta­tions that make, as we know them, the sens­es obso­lete, dele­te­ri­ous pat­tern of code, undu­lat­ing surge of flu­id, the offices of—suddenly everywhere—this heuris­tic insignia a sus­pen­sion bridge, my dose of sodi­um pen­tothal pro­lif­er­ates a slaugh­ter­house assem­bly line to con­vey­or belt and cir­cu­lar saw and I am every sev­enth aster.

Rober­to Teja­da is the author of Mir­rors for Gold (2006), Expo­si­tion Park (Wes­leyan, 2010), and Full Fore­ground (forth­com­ing in 2012 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona Press). His books on art and media his­to­ry include Nation­al Cam­era: Pho­tog­ra­phy and Mexico’s Image Envi­ron­ment (2009) and A Ver: Celia Alvarez Muñoz (2009). He con­tributed a cat­a­log essay to Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Ange­les, 1960–1980, an exhi­bi­tion cur­rent­ly at UCLA’s Ham­mer Museum.