Donnie with Baby and
Cows
The cows look
superimposed
beneath this makeshift
shelter:
part flying saucer, part
mold
and moss covered inverted
metal
dish receiving
transmissions
from above and funneling
them
directly into the ground
through
metal support poles or
siphoning
random signals into the
irregular
barriers of an electrified
fencing,
cored hot water heater, or
large
stump roots decorated by
cast
aside exhaust system pipe,
junked
car parts and farm effluvia,
jury
rigged to form something
like
a whole, with the idea that
nothing
reusable will ever go to
waste.
What do the cows care? They
are
among the dumbest creatures
on God's
good earth, a sentiment
shared,
no doubt, by farmer Donnie
cradling
a babe in arms, both smiling
for
the camera; a family album
keepsake
or is the picture to be
digitally
re-mastered and transmitted
to warn
off all the others still in
outer space?
"Silver"
He looks like someone
too weird for The Rocky
Mountain Horror Show
though he could
be
posing for the cover
photo
for a life work in
progress:
My Own Private Loony
Tunes.
The thing around his
neck
might be described as
a necklace, an
ornament
more appropriate for frontier
days on the Great Plains, or
in portraits of
chieftains
and warriors by George
Catlin
and others, that is if the
Indians
were into glitzy metal piece
working, instead of animal
teeth
and claws. The rest of
his
ensemble has a custom fit
feeling to it: tight pants
to emphasize his considerable
bulge, though whoever
designed
the top unwisely forgot
buttons
to close over his bare
chest.
The cool gloves almost save
serious style points lost by
the pants and top, cut as
they
are with a rakish sleeve that
slides over the too short
arms
of the jacket; it would be
wise
not to ask him about the ray
gun
clutched for action in his
right
hand in case it might be
real.
Firefighters
1935
They are dressed in
outrageous uniforms:
jackets
that look to be of a
fabric
like burlap cut several
sizes
too big, pants they must
walk
on to move, hands
covered
by oven mitts, heads
potato
sacks with small eye
holes
removed well above
their
foreheads, an outfit that
might
be useful for warding off
heat
or blending in with adobe
walls
in case their transformation
has
been completed so that they
may be sacrificed to alien
invaders
or Grade B movie, atomic
ray
exposed, mutant
creatures
the size of school buses,
all those outsized
tarantulas,
iguana, prehistoric toads
invading
border towns just this
side
of the desert not unlike
original
Star Trek peons in red
uniform
tops, those clothes of
doom
marking the wearers as
walking
dead men by the next reel.
But this photo is taken in
1935,
years before the first
atomic
tests, red menace scares, TV
melodramas, huge spikes in
cancer tumor deaths and these
men have a real job to
perform,
crippled by their clothes,
as they approach the
scene,
the fires that await
them.
No comments:
Post a Comment