Marilyn Higginson, Fragment Series #1, Oil on Wrapped Canvas, 30″ X 30″
Climax the Clown Looks Death in the Face
Death has a mouth like a collapsing black zero. Death
takes around fifty to sixty breaths
an hour. Death has a very faint smell. Death counts
itself in milliliters. Climax watches its drip-drip-drip
and eats a mid-afternoon snack and nods
and says all the same things everybody else
in the room keeps saying. Climax wears this great big
frown and paints it on bigger when it’s not big enough…
__________________________
Michael Derrick Hudson
Review by Corinne Bailey
This is haunting and rather creepy, especially the image – “death has a mouth like a collapsing zero.” If you’ve ever been put under via anesthesia, you may have experienced that collapsing zero feeling. The drip-drip-drip – take this to mean morphine, and death taking ever-slower breaths from suppression of the respiratory system. Not sure of the meaning of “Climax the Clown.” Is death the ultimate climax, or is this a sexual reference?