Three Poems
Automatic Earth
While my wife and I sit at the harborside bakery, shadows of fog drift in off the water, like dismal ghosts of those who died at the electric chair and the gas chamber and the gallows. From the way my wife looks at me from across the table, I know what she’s thinking: “We will have a rain of black holes.” How’s that my fault? The latest version of the universe is capable of operating itself. Somewhere near here it promises utopia, but it could be hell.
Mood Pills
Per doctor’s instructions, I take the pill as needed, which can be two or three or even four times a day. The highway billboard says, Everybody Sees Billboards. What’s wrong with me? I see headstones. My mother used to collect Green Stamps, which she would exchange for oven mitts or a toaster, cheap crap that always proved disappointing. But she persisted like a dog licking its sore parts. A heat ray developed by the military makes asylum seekers feel like their skin is melting when they get within sight of the border. Fleshy flowers have sprouted there, seemingly overnight.
It’s Not Me, It’s You
You hear the thin cries of a drowning man. You notice that seemingly innocent words like “today,” “yesterday,” and “tomorrow” have been censored. You pick quarrels with baggers at grocery stores. You try but fail to ignore the prevalence of right-wing militias, foreign movies dubbed in English, shark sightings. You prefer nonfiction to fiction and irony to whimsy. You wonder what it’s like to be in a medically induced coma. You have a recurrent dream that you’re lost in an old abandoned warehouse, usually with a childhood friend whose brother played Russian roulette once too often.
Illustration by Alvis Bertacchi
About the Artist
I am a young designer from Bergamo, Italy. I studied Industrial Design at Iowa State University and Lighting Design at the Politecnico di Milano. I am passionate about classical fashion and product design, as well as eco-friendly and sustainable solutions. Last month, I opened a small atelier studio in Abu Dhabi where I currently focus on illustrations and furniture projects.
My works feature self-contained and surreal scenarios that use a playful combination of color, texture, and composition to reflect two core values: elegance and vulnerability.
An homage to both the artistry of traditional Italian couture and elements from Venetian Carnival folklore, the aim of my art is to walk the tightrope between beauty and ridicule.
About the Illustration
”Planck” portrays a figure that is, quite literally, stuck within the confines of the image itself.
The Planck Length, from which the illustration takes its name, is referred to as “the smallest possible size for anything in the universe.” In “Planck,“ a brief sense of malaise is broken by the presence of the frog, a small and nimble creature that could not possibly comprehend nor worry about the finite space.
After all, what seems like an unbearably small box to the person is but a spacious, comfortable room to the little frog. So they stare at one another, one with worry and confusion about its confines, the other with pure indifference.