There are a number of poems in this collection which
are prose poems, which is usually
enough to send a chill through the heart of anyone.
[LAUGHS]
I'll read, they're called "Anxiety Number...
Numbered".
They come from an archive almost as big as this archive here
in Tucson.
Of similar anxieties, I just have a wardrobe
to keep them in there.
"Anxiety Number Five."
"I need to go to the bathroom.
Inside, it's very bright with spotless white tiles from floor
to ceiling.
As I'm washing my hands, I noticed the door of the shower
is covered in pieces of colored paper.
Crossing the room, I see that these are
Polaroids taped neatly in rows.
They show a man going through the stages of torture
with a razor blade.
His mouth held shut with the same duct tape used
to display the photographs.
The interior, visible behind him, clearly the same bathroom.
The process had been drawn out over some time.
A number of the wounds had already congealed.
The lines were very straight across the face, and chest,
around the arms, and so on, like the lines on graph paper.
In the first photo, you can see his eyes.
By the end, he is unrecognizable.
The last photograph is blurred.
There is no sign of blood on the white tiles.
They are clean and fresh.
I return to the Polaroids and noticed the last one is not
blurred anymore.
It is still developing.
I begin to make out the back of a man's head.
He is looking into pieces of colored paper."