Because the Living May Be Worth Something Too, by Brendan Todt

Man Pointing, by Alberto Giacometti (Switzerland) 1947

Because the Living May Be Worth Something Too
 
Alberto Giacometti’s L’homme au doigt (Pointing Man) [sold] for $141.3 million (including fees) from an auction at Christie’s last month…The work [is] part of an edition of six, plus an artist’s proof. 
                                --New York Times, June 9, 2015 
 
Just before the boys were born, one sold for more than any other sculpture ever.  But because we are in Des Moines, no one else is looking as the boys walk up to one of the remaining five, and point themselves, and almost touch.  No one to stop them but the lonely woman in Hopper’s Automat and me and the young art student just strolled in with his sketchpad who I can tell wants them to do it, who wants me to let them.  The way I want my wife to touch my own imperfect and priceless body.  To mark and ruin it.  Lay claim to it.  Make a secret of it.  There is no purity in copies.  The younger boy stands just as tall as the older which makes him more different, not less.  What, besides Iowa and us, makes any one thing worth any more or less?  I look at my boys and I know that one will find more love than the other.  One be hurt more.  One cause more hurt.  This is the nature of the body, which like any grown man pointing, is as rough and human as one long wound. 

Brendan Todt

Brendan Todt is the author of the poetry chapbook The Idea of Leaves within the Dying Tree.  His poem "At the Particle Accelerator at Krasnoyarsk" was included in Best American Non-Required Reading 2013.  His fiction and poetry can be found elsewhere in print and online.  He lives in Sioux City, Iowa and teaches at Morningside College.