half of two hungers II, 2023
Ceramics, unfired clay, natural rubber hose, metal hardware, wool, jumper cables, extension cords, compost, water, wood, etc.
"Home was a dream where the stench of the male goat’s piss mixed with the smell of the wet polished concrete floor that looked like red tiles, wet from the drip from the roof, caused by the avocado tree sponging the roof. The smell of my feet when I wore shoes with no socks, and that of an earthenware clay pitcher sweating water slowly.
Home, was lifting a greasy bucket from under the kitchen sink to dump the water out back because the drainage was clogged. It was a tan-yellowish bucket, almost transparent, it felt like someone rubbed it with lard, it was flexible, like skin. Its circular form would bend to the shape of an eye with the pull of the metal handle, precariously dripping water at the sharp edges, like crying, if moved too abruptly. I balanced it carefully.
Home sometimes is the dream of a companion machine organism that slowly drips with control, mischief, and hesitancy, heavy like a baby, but made of mud. Becoming unbecoming. Hair brushing the floor like when I sat on the couch upside down or when I swung on the swings too hard to feel my blood rush to my head.
She is the memory of my mother with a huge swollen pregnant belly, hanging dripping clothes on the clothesline while I watched from the swing set. The swing whistled songs to me with its old hinges and its creepy smile, soothing me when I cried.
It was a vessel who was a horse and a frog and a couch-swing my grandfather built for the porch of the ranch in Zacatecas. A goat’s udder, coniferous and plump, and my own breast, the same."
-Excerpt from the text also titled "Half two hungers"