Beads {Zachary Scott Hamilton}


Every shadow contains a soft treasure planted inside, between the limbic system of the dark apparatus, and the lines separating ribs; torso and splintered head of the beast -

Casual, raining down, plastic tear drops, withering in a pyramid shaped dress, Angela Rubens folds to the entryway, caressing her soft white kitten Altars Rube - her shale fingernails weaving intricate fur.

A record operator, sitting at an oak table in a room over, frail green light and a series of punctured floorboards hanging near the headphone sets, bundle soft cable into one outlet.

He places a dust coated needle in the groove of a 16th century sphere - swan lake - sound traveling through the rat devoured holes of the tool shed wall - in through the shadow lair - the dark apparatus.

A light flickers on beneath the metal plating, a casting through of machine punched octagons. This sunken shadow emerges softly upon the mink fur walls of the enclosure -

In another room, a wheeler engages springs behind the foot of a chair, gaining momentum where a shelf of freewheels lay installed, rotating at ninety degrees.

From rusting wall wires, converged in the mink furs, hanging from nails, a whole back of the plates disengage, rolling aside to reveal the wheeler work station.

On his back, oxygen compression tanks with adorning components follow the length of both arms, leading up to his long skinny neck. In a dull yellow glow of over use, each hand tool organized behind him, is displayed against brick that has begun to crumble in places.

Brown spectacles drop low over his nose, sagging with tan sweat as he moves through different wheels.

The wheeler, a scrawny metal worker from the late 1950's cast, sits in a goon position, seated, perched there, meager over siphoning equipment.

He is engaged in meters, dials tranquilizers, clocks, edging through his shop as he searches the room for diagnostics.

At ten-to-twelve-on-the-dot-to-the-seven-as-well, the oak branches dangle down into the v-machine, fragmenting, drumming a rhythm upon what now pulls together as a moving transport roof.

We turn to each other, with costumes and intricate make up, realizing we have been sitting in the theater. The night train releases a warm, guttural roar that echoes off of the hills in the distance. We examine each other: toys, papers, and cloth bags at our disposal. Fire heated seating, an object with the word NORWAY on it.

Through the theater seat, into myself at last, soft pastel lining of velvet cushion sewn beneath me. My eyes fold closed, single whistle of wind echoes down the ravine, a field of white flowers surrounding me, a small house with rickety smoke stacks.

The hills in the distance of Norway. Small pictures of my feet, dipped in tall wheat grass appear below cut-outs of fragrant-cement-throne-rock-mountains.

Daisies glimmer in the sunlight, burning silhouettes of the animals living in them. A caterpillar climbs the stem of the white flower, the body spreading apart and lifting the head away.

Feeling the flower out with torso and back legs, a part of the flower disappears in the caterpillars mouth, the size of a sunflower seed, showing the blue sky through yellowed veins, running to the stems, toward the branches of NOH theater.