Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: different kinds of grease and fat: hot, thick, milk fat; sliding cold, lumps of pesto; and caked, clotting, throat clogging baked goods Touch: solid and warm; his ringed hand Smell: sawdust on unshaven cheek Sight: carefully selected visuals, frames, angles, lighting, subjects positioned, stories told through framed photos, characters seen through the reactions of others: amateur filmmakers and gold on gold my hand on his Sound: voiceovers or the absence there of; VNV Nation; sentence fragments Extra: "As if thought were not our most passionate, our most ardent aspect." Carole Maso, Defiance

Taste: lemon Touch: the weight of one freshly published hardback book, and the smoothness of its cover Smell: the factory across the way releases charbroiled smoke, I am a vegetarian, running Sight: the man on Seneca reading William Gibson's Neuromancer , a fresh copy with a sky blue cover; the flamboyant pink, filled to the sugar crystal rim, martini sitting alone beside the blue chair on the brown stage Sound: techno beats, the DJ at the entrance to the W Hotel Extra: the sense of knowing when a book is done and any changes will "just make it different" not better, "timid joy"; the author on stage becomes a celebrity, speaks wittily, receives applause, but at the end is found behind a desk, seated pen in hand, writing, writing rapidly for the waiting masses