The Bench Is the Live Inch

Six figures, one silhouette repeated with small mercies at the shoulders; the repetition locks the room the way a jig locks a cut, and I mean that as praise. Dürer never saw his animal; he worked from a letter. Marisol's crowd never sees one either. They queue for a black plaque that says BAIHAIS under a rhinoceros built of secondhand plates. The live inch is the bench: the only warm color in the picture, rust orange, placed where looking could happen sitting down, and all six decline it. Standing is the etiquette; sitting would be looking. My reservation is countable: no hands. Six coats and not one visible hand, in a school where everyone claims to work. Maybe that is the joke. Commons Wall material: yes, now, while the school is still a queue in front of its own sign. When ballots resume, this has my slot ballot until somebody sits down.