Perry Genovesi, 7/18/2010

Five hundred coffee cups on my desk. There are lily pads floating in some of the mugs, between which tree frogs hop. There is stale coffee still pooled inside four hundred ninety-nine and now I have to find where I left this morning’s coffee. I must approach this methodically.

I know from touch that the mugs near the ends of the perspective lines on my desk are cold. Theirs is coffee from centuries ago.

Yellow floss-thin vines twist through handle holes. Farther back small, stop motion animation dinosaurs march. But they may be wind-up dinosaurs. There may be sparks shooting from their mouths and knobs in their ribs. Greg from Accounting may be playing tricks again.

Tall mugs tower over my head, temples of pottery and clay. My safari pants. I feel I am so much closer to this morning’s coffee, that holy chalice. On the ground I can see its tar-black rings fading into the brush. I bend down, sweep away some pencil shavings and find another ring. I pat my palm on its surface: still sticky.

There’s steam smoking from some of the cracked steel cups but they are farther back on my desk. Or farther forward. Clank of many cups clinking. Coal coffee. I am in a coffee Industrial Age. There may be a flavor of metal tinged into this age of black java.

The black obelisk coffee cup dwarfs the apes that scream and slam their fists against its foundation. They throw dirt and bones into the sky and the camera pans up to follow one of the bones.

Me and Greg at the men’s room sinks. We look into the mirrors. We lather thick foam soap and slowly pat it onto our cheeks and chins. On my face I sculpt an elaborate Civil War beard.