This installation was a collaboration of poetry by Melanie Kenny
and mixed media by myself. We began meeting in January of 1998
to brainstorm concepts and ideas. What emerged was this series of work
that was exhibited in October of 1998 at the University of Michigan
Pierpont Commons. media: 2 Hanging sculptures - silkscreen gut on vine structures
5 basket people - sea grass and yarn
5 wall sculptures - grapefruit skin and copper wire
sandbox with sticks painted and covered with snakeskin Another Snake in a Basket
Sideshow Charmed
The boy waits, another snake in a basket,
for the thin embrace of blades, slid in
by the sharp edge of the Snake Charmer's song.
His body weaves to the wail of his master,
as old swords lift shirt away from skin.
He whispers the litany of apprentice:
"You must know the snake before you can drum
charm,
suspend the moment of almost-striking, almost free.
Learn how the body uncoils from shade.
Is the hunger for light slow or fast?
A snake charmer keeps his distance:
measures death by the cobra's height,
calculates the circumference of poison.
you must know all perspectives.
You are initiate in this mystery".
The blades come faster and faster.		 The Snake Charmer's Dream
He chimes the dambaru:
a song of swallowing, jaw unhinged,
of light hissing through woven bamboo.
He dreams Naja Naja
in a slithery mobius dance.
I am the greenest snake...
The color is wrong, too bright, envious.
He wakes a man, forearms thick with bite scars,
to split-tongued laughter.
He lacks the Cobra's figure-eight tattoo;
the sandal print of charm's dominion
not on flared hood, but in the dirt beneath his feet.
A snake charmer in dreams is always green,
snake and not snake, swaying out of range,
unable to speak the language of hiss. 		Journeyman He accepts the bite; skin, fang-split,
shivers under the courtship of venom.
The boy hopes for the eyes of a snake
to open behind his lids,
and fall from socket to palm--
pearls for the serpent princess.
The snake Charmer sings under his breath,
remembers from long ago, a woman's voice
like the bite of an asp:
maybe you are a snake
The boy's mouth opens,
and the snakes bow low in their baskets
as the princess of scales uncoils from his tongue.
Charm's secrets fill him.
Test of seizure, fever's lesson:
the spine is really a snake, waiting
to be pulled from the body and made supple.
Listen, it is this simple--
each cobra knows his debt,
ask one to dance. 		The Wedding of the Snake Charmer's Apprentice
It is the rule of thieves and boys
to cross the river, bring the poison
home, clothe her in a gown of scales,
spread her hair out on the bed like a hood.
You sing charms to still her mouth,
before she coils in your basket.
Offer her a lotus garden if she will dance for you,
teach you the snake's eye.
Know that when you shake her free,
the rod must come down hard
upon the back of her long neck
force her open mouth into the dust,
until the earth is milky with venom.
For a single flower, for a petal
she would've shed her skins
and given you the ruby
of her cobra heart. 		The Charmer Dances with his Snake-Headed Wife
She tastes the air with her forked tongue;
once you wanted to tear it from her throat,
make a clear broth flavored with rain and afternoon.
You whisper the few words of hiss
that carry over to your tongue:
sinew, slit, and sigh.
She listens to your promise-
This life will be a tight cord, an eye unlocked by breath.
She opens her dowry of warning:
Do not trust false acrobats--men clothed
in snakes whose broken fangs weep yellow-clear.
True snake charmers are born from the earth,
from the cast down teeth of serpents.
Caress the scar, signature of her cobra
teeth cast in your flesh.
Her hand presses against your spine.
Immunity is not armor, but memory-
the tale of the snake that bit you. 		Contact Melanie Kenny at [email protected]
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