Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsFall 2020  Vol. 19 No. 2
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an online journal of literature and the arts
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back ELENA KARINA BYRNE

Tony Oursler and His Dummy Watchers Live On

in us, outside these ill bounds, a thrown voice, an “other” me
writhes, cloth body emptied, head caught yelling at you under
the couch of the 50s, Elvis & his twelve gauge pointed right at
the television red appearance-complex, till all else is child’s play
under the skin, so freak of nature we are when disturbed, haunted
like the camera obscura, all aperture & apparatus language: “you can
never get the rain to come down when you want it to,” never keep this
body from doubt. You consist of allied chaos & memory, increasingly,
a mime, a world drama, video-icon-platform cut from trees. I can hear
my twin shoes squeak over its length though they are not alive. Tony is
no dummy in the corner. His family’s secret topology might well include
mother’s feathers for rhinoceros skin to live in a chamber population of
Moebius riddle-dolls & caption-daemons & war animals disguised as angels
falling, to be shown in someone’s traveling circus tent the color of sea candy.  


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