Laura Gabriela Amador, Earth Rib Cage (Artist Website)
Soil-based watercolor on paper
9” x 12”
At what point does a person become a body,
then a body a cadaver,
a thing as much a thing
as the effects left sunning in the street.
Orange shoe. Skateboard.
Bicycle helmet. Wheels still
spinning light between the spokes
while the body cools.
We see this and remember
all the names
of the dying. We don’t know
what to do with dreams
or the series of failures
folded neatly in the ribcage
of a young man being revived in the street.
Do they exit the body,
not like a soul but like
breath? Or settle like sunken, vaporous stars
in the shadow left
on the warming pavement,
breathing light
into the wreck?