“Derrickman J.E (wildcatter turned roughneck) clocks in at the oil rig; brown bag, lunch in hand.
Locker room: bodies weathered by their station. A small pendant of a newborn carved in Myrrh
hangs from his neck. A tingling discomfort lingers in his throat. Off he goes to the steaming
pipes where his hand will expertly guide the pump. The operation begins. The gurgling pipes
eat up the ocean floor. Underwater: a sudden current drags an enormous conch shell – at great
speed – towards the main pump. Blocked now, the once inert machine twists like a wounded
animal; dinosaur slurry animating its contortions. With all its parts now alive Derrickman J.E
reluctantly accepts his fate. An oily hose lifts him by the neck, constricting his carotid while a
serendipitous drop of crude flies downward towards his gaping mouth. Gasping for air, but in
doing so, inhaling the bitterest ambrosia. After the commotion, his body is limp, poisoned but
not strangled.
Faysal’s work is a sharp assessment of industrial permanence, a written word in a providing
chain, now able – as it stands erected – to hold, to even provide us with a sweet serum of
Health that extends this moment of asphyxia a bit longer or forever. Or is it a gaping wound we
are licking? A dripping nourishment of time on display. Immunizes but also anesthetizes.
Em’s, an event of affective intuition, both carcass and butcher (a skinning knife with fur handle)
in metaphorical one, two liners that are always enough for you needn’t write much for a potent haiku. how much honey can i eat? is far from passively feeding from this arrangement or
standing in the rain as it is a great spirit that contains, like architecture itself. For it too must be
scattered somewhere. And we too will find it ruined in (due) time.
Both in existence here, in the ghostly presence of an absent animal.“
Antonio Lopez
