Saint of Disappointment

By T.J. Cheng

Glenn Kaino - Bring Me The Hands of Piri Reis (2011), Bronze, 8 x 8 x 4 inches, Photograph courtesy the artist
Image description: A bronze sculpture of a pair of disembodied hands is displayed on a white pedestal. The hands, placed side by side, are both clenched into fists. The backs of the hands face upwards and their knuckles point forward. Attached to the fists are various sharp objects including compasses, pencils, dividers, pins, and more, many of which are cartographic tools. Rendered in naturalistic detail, these tools protrude from the backs of the hands, as if they have grown from them. The entire sculpture is rendered in dark gray. Spots of light are reflected on its metallic surface. 

SAINT OF DISAPPOINTMENT

Even before the crime scene
I draw a chalk outline where I think
the body ought to drop.
The heave of arms,

The tin thunder trickling
from strings in a throat grown thick
on themselves, multiplying out
the bottle, defying truth,

If truth ever stood up. I want irreversible.
I want premeditated murder.
I want the hair downwards and the
host desecrated, curtain torn, hands on

God’s own daughter undone and
looking into the midnight in a man’s
coat just as black. A girl fathering
himself into the gloom,

The endless matryoshka of hospital
rooms until each operating table divides
invisible to the human eye, the
normal glance up and down.

The morgue. I want the morgue.
I want the half life. I want an obituary
where they print my name and
the dead craft of my gaze doesn’t move,

I want to be good and want nothing.
Not a newspaper or a new letter on
my pale pink card, not a soul,
not a smile with the eyes behind it

Working rays. Not a house with
malachite windows where I might
split my head apart. I don’t want to want this:
that impression on the ground

Or to find out if I fit in it like weight 
to wet concrete. Time to disaster. Or
rain to tarmac, in the middle of the year,
turning drawn lines into long silver curls of steam.

Glenn Kaino - Bring Me The Hands of Piri Reis (2011), Bronze, 8 x 8 x 4 inches, Photograph courtesy the artist
Image description: A bronze sculpture of a pair of disembodied hands is displayed on a white pedestal. The hands, placed side by side, are both clenched into fists. The backs of the hands face upwards and their knuckles point forward. Attached to the fists are various sharp objects including compasses, pencils, dividers, pins, and more, many of which are cartographic tools. Rendered in naturalistic detail, these tools protrude from the backs of the hands, as if they have grown from them. The entire sculpture is rendered in dark gray. Spots of light are reflected on its metallic surface.  

TIGER SHARK, 1991

I have swords in my mouth
a whole legionsworth of 
soldiers in formation 
and they glide wet along the blue
gut of the world. I am surgeon
of everything possible.
When I yawn the sea shrinks back
from the garnet hilts of my gums
and when I sleep I don’t dream of
formaldehyde        just warm water
and trash for breakfast. Ladies’ arms.

Look me in the face and tell me
you don’t feel that missing limb.
That tug on your line that pulls you
into the bay and onto the dock
where men will lay their 
callouses on you and
that urge to shout: I’m a gallbladder
an entire adult goat kind of fellow
I’ve an appetite on me
but hey     I’ve seen the bottoms
of so many yachts 
and I’ve had such mercy.

Won’t you spare some for me?
Tell me I was the most magnificent thing
you saw. That death         meek
fell outwards through the glass
and sublimed on the cold floor.
I never even met the man
and I died for him. The sun blew out
the veil vivisected
you in your nice herringbone fabric
stood in the crowd and marvelled
Lord      Tell me is that real

Glenn Kaino - Invisible Man (2016), Blackened Aluminum and Mirrored Stainless Steel, 38.375 x 72.625 x 11 inches, Photograph courtesy the artist 
Image description: Against the backdrop of a blue sky, a sculpture of a solitary man stands on a gray pedestal. The sculpture has a mirrored surface and is rendered flat - the blue sky is reflected on the entire body of the man, rendering him invisible. The figure is discernible from his environment only via the sides of the sculpture, which is outlined in black. The man’s hands are raised in surrender. The sculpture is flanked by two neat rows of palm trees.

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Teddy Jericho Cheng lives in Singapore, where they are currently studying for their IB diploma. In their spare time they like to paint and play tennis. Their interests include art history, dead poets, and God. This is their first published work.

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Glenn Kaino (b. 1972, Los Angeles, California) is known internationally for his expansive vision and activist-minded practice, which encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, performance, monumental public art, theatrical production, and feature film. Focusing on equity, social justice, and climate change, among other urgent topics, the artist’s work traces through lines among various art historical movements, including Arte Povera, Conceptualism, and performance art. A relentless optimist, Kaino creates work imbued with hope, revealing structures of power and domination and creating opportunities for direct action and progress, all rooted in the belief that cultural production can affect real change. Kaino often highlights the illusionistic and mesmeric effects of scientific and natural phenomena in his large-scale installations to explore notions of empathy and subjectivity and to bring legibility to the often-invisible forces that shape our world.

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