A Robot’s History of Art
We still don’t know the significance
of their two-dimensional acts. We all know
when Panderob manufactured his greatest work,
the 4th Street silicone shower, its utility was seamless;
the copper pipes gently arced over the traditional
street paved in gold, a perfectly balanced web
of light and shadow spraying the finest-grade lubricant
over our dry hinges as we rolled to the plants
on Formosa Avenue. Their art served other purposes,
unclassified. And now, some collectors treasure
renderings of piles of shoes, broken, hairless dolls
or the soup can repetitions, but none know why
they were formed. Maybe a visual inventory
was needed to replace the time spent motionless
at night. Maybe they had no permanent memory.
Their soft language was circular, random,
like the logic-loop infection that shut unit six down.
This was their peculiar fate. Nothing existed
except by how other things described it:
the sun, a chariot racing across the sky,
marking the hours; the hours, a stream of sand
pooling in a greening metal bowl, emptied when filled.