5: "The Twittering Machine" by Alice Shapiro (Friday, July 10)

"The Twittering Machine"

"A line is a dot that went for a walk”
-- Paul Klee

Clock. Time’s machine
twittering off each glassy moment
fragile soundings faraway
at the nape of memory
reminding, rewinding.
O clock, o’clock
machine of mornings
to wash, to work, to win
against your ticking, always
on.

Toaster. Bread burner
hot molecular intrusion making food smack
of sweet and crunchy bliss,
morning’s stomach-hug
tactile power in the lift of a stiff slice
buttered, jammed, swallowed
well before the dreaded time to clock
in.

Auto. Legs in, torso in, head
swivels east to west checking traffic
from a rear-view looking glass.
Leather smells spiked with stale tobacco smoke
suffocate in a cloistered cocoon space
blasted by a vulgar booming song
muffling twittering signals
from a wrist-clock, reminding
of commitment.
And the auto, instead of turning in,
punching in to work
drives straight into the sunset.

--Alice Shapiro
author of Cracked: Timeless Topics of Nature,
Courage and Endurance

Note: “The Twittering Machine” is a painting by Bauhaus artist Paul Klee created in 1922. Klee taught at the Bauhaus, Germany’s most advanced art school from 1920 to 1931. The artists of the Bauhaus explored the relationship between usefulness and beauty and the modernist idea that mass-production was reconcilable with the individual artistic spirit. Klee’s often gently humorous works are filled with allusions to dreams, music, and poetry. According to Robert Hughes in The Shock of the New, “Klee tended to see the world as a model, a kind of orrery run up by the cosmic clockmaker -- a Swiss God -- to demonstrate spiritual truth.”

To view Paul Klee's "The Twittering Machine," click here: http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=37347.

To listen to Alice Shapiro reading "The Twittering Machine," click here:

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Alice Shapiro studied with NYU professor William Packard, founder of the NYQuarterly. She published a chapbook with Scars Publications (2007), and received the Bill C. Davis Drama Award for a one-act play. Her collection of poems, Cracked: Timeless Topics of Nature, Courage and Endurance was published by TotalRecall Press (2009). A second book will be released in 2010. Shapiro can be reached at http://aliceshapiro.com