A Last Good Work, by Emma Weiss

Mask Sculpture by Giulia Cenci (Italy) contemporary, photography by Ruben Sevilla Brand (USA, b. Venezuela) contemporary

A Last Good Work
 
On the fourth floor of the old Acquisitions Department building, a multi-page report had remained in a desk after the Department’s closure, that dictated all former subjects of Acquisition be apprehended and eliminated; the Department Head leafed through the remaining files that were yellowing apart in a cabinet, as the tepid glare of the walls sucked up his illusions; he finally found the file he’d been looking for, labeled: Matters of Apprehension, and on this discovery, he remembered the most urgent of cases that took place when the Art and Acquisitions Department had still been open for business, a case that required urgent closure—the second and third births that had taken place (the births had resulted in twins after all) and were a result of a collective effort by the entire Department of Acquisitions--that was now folded, boxed up, and fully disjointed; they (the Acquisitions Department, that is) had given the twins their maladapted freedom for a predetermined length of time, now ended, which now placed the Department Head in the position—this was a business after all, for which there were no rich rewards nor calculable compensation—of apprehending the twins in order to place them somehow on public display, the last mission for the Department Head for whom no department now remained; he was therefore headless, (which he found funny, considering the context and what was to come) and as he fondled a photograph from inside the file, taken on the day the twins had been expertly separated from their shared spine, he remembered: he had always known that the twins’ destiny would someday find them two-faced, bronzed, and re-spined; he plotted the twins’ location on a leftover napkin on an overturned desk and concocted a plan that would entice the twins back to the crumbling edifice of the Acquisitions Department building, where he would fire up the last vat of bronze—for a final project he would first sketch, model, and undertake—in order to capture the serenity on their faces; they had artful eyes that had been opened to the beauty of the world, but their ill-gotten freedom had gotten inside their heads, and since he’d known it would come to this, the Department Head began to hatch mark out his plot on a different napkin yet, this final sketch of what promised to be a Department Masterpiece; this project would make him the notorious figure he’d always been denied of being, and at the project’s completion he would hang the twins’ faces outside (where they had liked it most) so the sun could warm the bronze of their eyelids, and where he could use his wooden cane (whose strength he hoped would suffice as a stand) for the display of their freshly solidified faces; so there in the middle of the city he could show his skills at last; with the twins’ freshly recombined spines, he could close the last birth file and finally remember: how to acquire solidity himself.
 
Emma Weiss 

Emma Weiss is a poet and writer from Rhode Island. She works as a carpenter restoring old homes and as a model for art schools. She seeks to be a representative poetic voice for working people while writing toward justice. A graduate of the Essay Incubator program in Boston, you can find more of her work  at thesolidpage.substack.com

Ruben Sevilla Brand is a photographer, film maker, and endurance athlete from Venezuela. He works now in New York City. You can find more of his work at rsbmedia.us 

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