Aleah Gatto

Skin

We change our skin every morning.
Like cars with oil, it runs dry, blackens,
browns, the warrior organ.
 
When the sun tips into Africa, the white skin
of zebras is bisected by black rods
that stick up from their hides.
 
In the Gaza strip at daybreak, bombs singe skin
off little boys who ride bikes
without handlebars through the skinny streets.
 
On the shoreline, tanner’s skin is peeled off in layers,
and in the South, it divides Texas and Mexico
from fusing together, becoming one skin.
 
Maybe we should get rid of our skin,
rip it off all our newly-borns for the dawn of
an age of just bone and flesh, stomachs
 
popping out from underneath livers,
hearts thumping against rib cages, and lay
all our love, all our cards, on war-pierced tables.
 
But we will wear our skin
and put on new skin
with every bloody rising sun,
 
and forever be like the snakes
who crouch in the underbrush, and hiss,
and shed.

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Metropolis II

I am at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with Dad and Julie. We are observing a modern piece, Chris Burden’s “Metropolis II,” a jumbling mishmash of mini-plastic cars driving on mini-plastic roads that weave in disarray between mini-plastic buildings. The cars are zipping and zooming and the buzzing doesn’t stop, and they pop out of the underneath roads and zip and zoom on the highways and the byways that are stacked one on top of the other and the buzzing doesn’t stop.
 
“Hm, in-ter-es-ting.” Julie speaks very slowly, articulating carefully.
 
“Must be more than six-feet high,” Dad muses, arching his eyebrows and raising his chin coolly. I observe a group of intellectuals through the chaos. “Life is in disarray,” one yells over the buzz. My Dad hears them. “Would Michelangelo think this is art?” he considers. “Not a David. What’s the point?”
 
I scan “Metropolis II” for a sign. The six-lane highway is all blocked up again. But wait, it’s moving now, and wait. There is something. It moves through the makeshift citadel like a fly, no, more graceful—like a dancer. It zips by us for the first time and I see it: a little silver car, indistinct in all but the way it catches the illumination of the room and reflects it into the eyes of the onlookers. It is humble and baffling at the same time, going ‘round and ‘round and never getting to the place it needs to be, needing to speed that fast only to arrive once again on highway number three. Poor plastic person. As the tiny silver car speeds past a second time, I am suddenly reminded of something, and I think back to earlier that day when we passed by another art piece, also Chris Burden’s, called “Urban Light.” It is two-hundred and two cast-iron streetlamps set up in columns for people to walk through and gaze up at. As we walked past them, they stood there silent, motionless—a collection of giants discussing with soundless words. For a moment I considered weaving in between them—there were no ropes to prohibit it. I would have liked, I think, to run through the columns of lamppost, with no clear direction, re-crossing my path and retracing my steps and having my light summer sweater trail after me, backtracking and spinning and spinning in endless circles around the iron.
 
At “Metropolis II” spectators get antsy. I lean over the railing. I stretch my neck like a turtle. My skin strains, my eyes shift and my pupils dilate. The silver car comes around the bend for a third time. I stare as it passes. In an instant, the car is a silver-plated peony, blooming, white petals opening up, letting me in, and I see an old Joe running late from work who is listening to his nagging wife on the phone who is spitting out ingredients he must find at the grocery store for her legendary Shepherd’s pie. They are having company tonight, the in-laws. “Alright, black pepper, garlic. Don’t we have Worcestershire sauce? Rosemary, tomato paste. How much ground lamb?” He is swerving out on highway number three, six tiers up, turns onto a side street. One plastic hand is clamped to the wheel, the other to his ear, yelling and spitting, grumbling, oscillating between sidewalk and divider. “Kosher salt? Ok, ok! Fine. Fine. And how many eggs? Oh, just the yokes? Well why does that matter to me?” And his little silver car is reflecting the light, and the rays are reflecting and converging into one extraordinary compilation of imagination, flying at the speed of light right into my eye.
 
There is a place I go to in my dreams that I forget about when I wake up. Life, indeed, is in disarray. It is a spectacular display of spontaneity. Silver cars speed by, traffic, noise, a labyrinth of lampposts casting light from above, and spectators get antsy.
 
The intellectuals leave. Dad and Julie begin to walk away. They call for me and I turn to go, but when I pivot on my heels I am in a cast-iron forest of lampposts. It is nighttime and cool and they are lighting up the ground for me. And now I am running through the columns with no clear direction. I am recrossing my path and retracing my steps and having my light summer sweater trail after me.
 
I must be dreaming. I am in a nomadic silver car. Destination: nowhere in particular. I wrap a plastic hand around the iron. I will be late for dinner. I lean out from the pole and look up to the dazzling light and now I am spinning and spinning and spinning…