Onze Labs

18th and Connecticut

The bus pulls up beside a public telephone into which a man is shouting. He wears paint-spattered dark green work pants and a battered white T-shirt. His brand-new baseball cap sits backward atop his tousled mop of sandy brown hair. He is pacing as far as the line will allow him and gesturing wildly with his free hand, which holds a cigarette. Suddenly he stops moving, relaxes a bit, takes a drag on his cigarette, holds it such that his thumb and index finger touch his lips as he inhales long and slow. A funny expression passes over his face as the bus enters his sight line. His body goes a bit slack and his eyes fix on the vehicle's side. The ad is reflected in a shop window: a lithe woman lying on her side wearing mesh underwear and a sultry grin.

A woman jogs close behind the man, tosses him a look as she passes him, but he is still ogling the bus, doesn't notice her lean, agile body glowing from the run or her long shiny black braid bouncing from one buttock to the other with each step of her trot. His eyes follow the bus as it pulls from its stop, he turns back to the phone as the jogger gives up and goes on.

Jackpot

    She doesn't come to this dumpster for food.

    It's situated behind an architect's office and she has no idea that if she would let herself be seen he would leave her some soup, stew, porridge, ripe bananas—something tender and nutritious—because his brother was found on Market Street one night, rotten teeth halfway down his throat, stuck in a hunk of cheese that was much harder in the middle than it was on its edges and his hunger so sharp that he jammed the whole wad into his mouth and upon realizing he couldn't chew it, tried to swallow the thing hole and it choked him to death.

    But she's not here to eat.

    Thirty-five, looking that and ten; fifteen even. The yellow sun sinking behind the gilded dome of City Hall. She stares off into the coming night as she clasps squares of bubble wrap—sheets of them, a stash—holds them to her chest and squeezes, one dot at a time then handfuls in rapid fire, her ruddy face registering a kind of bliss as if she can see the air she's emancipating float down the alley and into the sheltering sky.

Puzzlement II

It doesn't happen the way you think it will:
the cyan gradients of this one
matching those of that, forming
a calm ocean blue.
The piece will not fit;
there. No amount
of flipping and turning
will allow the knobs to lock together
to form one smooth tessellation.   

Complication. Beginning
with that word: why not say "tiling,"
call it what it is, simply,
a series of connections
forming a whole
that cannot be defined
by the sum of its parts.
These dye-cut pieces are not,
no matter how much they appear to be,
identical in shape; their knobs
and lobes are their own and fit
together only one way; if.
What about the rest of us?

The connection happens
in what you miss: a lifeboat here,
a smear of shadow there; the edge
of brown that matches, however incongruently,
the Day-Glo gold floating to safety
on the tumult, the turquoise sea.

After the other amoebae have been snapped into place
the operator is left to confront the error:
somehow this has to work. A twist,
two turns, an uncomfortable flip
and it slips into its space.

The mystery itself is the key, the raft
that takes us to shore, this equation of unlike variables,
a problem requiring contemplation/computation/derivation to determine
the valence of elements in a solution.

Puzzlement I

It doesn't happen the way you think it will: the cyan gradients of this one matching those of that, forming a calm ocean blue. The piece will not fit; there. No amount of flipping and turning will allow the knobs to lock together to form one smooth tessellation.
    Complication. Beginning with that word: why not say "tiling," call it what it is, simply, a series of connections forming a whole that cannot be defined by the sum of its parts. These dye-cut pieces are not, no matter how much they appear to be, identical in shape; their knobs and lobes are their own and fit together only one way; if. What about the rest of us?
    The connection happens in what you miss: a lifeboat here, a smear of shadow there; the edge of brown that matches, however incongruently, the Day-Glo gold floating to safety on the tumult, the turquoise sea. After the other amoebae have been snapped into place the operator is left to confront the error, for somehow this has to work. A twist, two turns an uncomfortable flip and it slips into its space. The mystery itself is the key, the raft that must be steered to shore by equating unlike variables; computing the valence of elements in a solution.