MATERIALS & MEDIA

Crystle Dino

Crystle Dino

In every project of mine, the theme of layering and repetition is prominent.

This layering shows my experience of development in this program- the things I am discovering about myself and building upon…. Not only that, but the various theories we are learning to apply.

He whips white paint at an American Flag

For…8…straight…days

And I am expected to overlook his exhaustion

and lack of bodily hygiene

because he’s “an artist”

The man makes ceramic rocks

Literally rolls balls of clay

and treks out in the woods

and photographs this “series”

He’s gotten poison ivy three times this semester

While I’ve gotten it twice

and haven’t even been out in woods

Why doesn’t he pee

before he goes off to play Thoreau?

He tapes cricket cut letters to ladders and calls it “sculpture”

Expecting me to “oooh”, “ahhhh”

get all teary-eyed

telling him how prolific he’s being

Cricket letters…on a ladder…

I’ve been tied to a tree

Painted from head to toe

Acted as his model for figure drawing classes

Every classmate of his has seen my vagina

Luckily he’s not that great of a drawer

Could be a vagina, could be a tomato…

No one is quite sure

But, for sure,

they’ll never look at bruschetta the same

Me, I’m a writer

I’m the artist other artists say isn’t “a real artist”

I disagree

I create allusions

that tie the hominids to Planet of the Apes

My personality splatters in black and white

over paper canvases

My words flood pages in unprecedented phrases

I am the documenter of time

The recorder of human thought

I hail from a time when children were left behind

Where Mr. Rogers was our neighbor

and he and King Friday babysat us

while mom smoked Camel filters in the kitchen

that she purchased from a vending machine at the local Denny’s

 I survived despite running with scissors

Not wearing seatbelts

Playing with toys that could easily be swallowed

No metal detector at my elementary school

to screen for guns

 I am the result of Ghost Busters, Harry and the Hendersons, and Alf

Where The Wonder Years

gave us hope

that our childhood sweetheart

could end up being the love of our life

 I rocked out to Paula Abdul’s Cold Hearted Snake on repeat

while the Technotronics urged to “Pump Up The Jam”

in a time of Side A and Side B cassette tapes

 I played Racko

Connect Four,

fed hungry hippos

 As a frog, I braved the streets full of cars

Shot down alien space crafts

Atari marked the end of childhood,

of children playing kickball

at the park down at the end of the block

 I belong to a generation of neon cladded folks

Who knew the pleasure of dog-earring pages of paperbacks

Who were asked if they would like to be seated in a “smoking or non-smoking section”

Who didn’t get a television show for having a baby at sixteen

 I’ve seen a world transition from floppy discs, to CDs, to memory cards

From gas-guzzlers, to hybrids, to electric vehicles with special parking privileges

 I was brought up in a time when there was no need to dial area codes

When bullying was thought to make men out of you in school

A world of payphones, roller-rinks, DOS

A world where SMH, FML, LOL, JK, BRB were meaningless

 I am a child of the 80s

I now live in a time where no child is left behind

The trolley has taken its last lap

Mom smokes E-cigs

And Mr. Rogers laced up his shoes for the last time in 2003

Stomach cancer

#mrrogers #bemyneighbor #childofthe80s #poetry

Reality came up behind me at a bar

Reached his arm around my shoulder

And when I turned to see what asshole was touching me,

He stuck his beer-soaked tongue in my mouth

I grabbed hold of my Coors Light bottle

every intention of shattering it across his face

as soon as I got my own damn face out of the way

But he pulled away and he was

…handsome

He smiled and I just…

MOTHERFUCKER!

I jumped into bed with him

I know! I am aware I did everything wrong

Absolutely everything

But you weren’t there—and he was perfect

No dinner, no date, no romancing of the stone

Just these blue eyes that made me weak

I had already undressed him 11 times with my eyes

Before he even removed his shoes

He was even sexier naked

And I kept thinking about that Seinfeld episode

Where Jerry’s friends are all like

Men’s bodies are just functional

They are not by any means works of art

I’m paraphrasing of course

I am in the middle of sex after all

But this, this was art

6 feet 4 inches of pure oil-canvased art

Hanging in a gallery in New York City

We started making out again

He still tasted like beer

Wow, didn’t even wait for his beer breath to go stale

This must be like a world-record of slore-ing

He slid under the covers and I gripped the bed sheets

He opened my legs

I held my breath

And a smile crawled across my face

as I stared up at the ceiling

It was bad

This was BAD

I would even go as far as to say

this was like the worst oral sex I had ever had

I thought

Shit

What do I do?

Do I When Harry Met Sally it?

Do I fake an orgasm so great

that people on the other side of the apartment wall

will knock and ask what kind of sandwich I’m eating?

“Ohhh, yes, mmmm, wowzer”

Did I just say Wowzer?

Well that’s one theory to get him to stop

Just yell a bunch of awkward shit

Zoinks! WOW BATMAN! I can’t wait to pull your pork!

I laughed in my head

I wonder what he’s thinking about

Well he’s probably not thinking about calculus down there

He’s too pretty

I have a project that’s due tomorrow

I had a wealth of inspiration

and I still can’t figure out what the fuck to write about

Total cornucopia of writing possibilities

Dead babies, broken grave stones, weeping angels

Am I deplorable for thinking about dead babies

while having sex? That’s probably a straight ticket to Hell.

But maybe it’s like the tree analogy thing

If no one hears my deplorable thoughts

did they ever really happen?

Insert X-files music here

Wait, the movement under the sheets

Stopped

Did I laugh outloud at my x-files joke?

“You okay down there?” I yelled

I probably shouldn’t have yelled

Blankets aren’t really sound proof

“Yeah” he said back

I pulled back the covers

We had reached stale beer smell

He looked up at me with his big blue eyes

It played out like a scene from Diner

Except without his penis

ending up at the bottom of a popcorn box

 He insisted on traveling 40 minutes to Lake Zurich

Five dollar special on Tuesday theater nights

Pulled into Walmart

to purchase dollar bin candy

 Reese’s Pieces, Milk Duds, Sour Patch Kids

and a 4 pack of A&W Root beer

lined the inside of my daintily sequenced purse

Arrival epically terrible movie

Halfway through

I pushed up the arm rest divider between us

and put my hand in his

I figured something heart-racing

should happen in that theater

 Driving home I noticed Christmas lights

Rows of houses with tiny specs of color

Peeking out from under layers of snow

 I pulled into a driveway

An inflatable reindeer

And snowglobe kept

Frosty the hand-built snowman company

I did this as a kid

sat on strangers’ driveways

 Putting the car in park

nuzzling my head into his chest

he interlaced his fingers in mine

I could hear

his heart beating through his jacket

I was a kid again

And this was Christmas

Demographics

Name Kevin C

Sex: Male

Age: 52

Occupation: Unemployed

Children: None that I know of

 Finish this questionnaire and meet someone special!

1.      Who is your hero?  Myself

2.      If you could live anywhere, where would it be? My house, because I’m awesome.

3.      What would you change about yourself if you could? Nothing

4.      What makes you laugh the most? My jokes

5.      What motivates you to work hard? I don’t

6.      What is your proudest accomplishment? Flunking out of college. I got 10 F’s back-to-back for 2 semesters at Northern Iowa. That’s gotta be a record.

7.      What is your favorite book to read? To Kill a Mockingbird

8.      What was the last movie you went to? What did you think? Arrival, I thought “it sucked”; I thought “you should be able to get a refund.”

9.      What did you want to be when you were small? A Conductor—I liked going places. I wanted to go to Europe on a train. I wasn’t good at Geography.

10.  If you could choose to do anything for a day, what would it be? Be a conductor on a train and going to Paris.

11.  What is your favorite game or sport to watch and play? Basketball

12.  What would you sing at Karaoke night? I wouldn’t, I’m a pussy.

13.  What two radio stations do you listen to in the car the most? AM 1000, AM 8200

14.  If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? Pizza. I did that once in college. I ate pizza for an entire month. Probably the most awesome month of my life.

15.   Do you like or dislike surprises? Depends. I like surprises, but not if it’s a bad surprise. Not if someone dies or Trump wins the election.

16.  Who would you want to be stranded with on an island? Some native who knew how to fucking keep us alive, who would fucking climb a tree and get us coconuts and shit; whoever that fucken guy is. Like, I could have picked Jennifer Aniston, but I would have to eat her in about 48 hours and it would suck for both of us.

17.  How would your friends describe you? Elusive

18.  . What's the craziest thing you’ve done in the name of love? My girlfriend came over from Israel. She was annoying me, so I left her at a gas station. I WENT BACK FOR HER! But it was funny because I was gone for about 10 minutes and she doesn’t speak English.

19.  What are your hobbies? Drawing penises, art, cycling, television