Re: Fresh Kills

   Demolition precipitate came showering down through three
   stories of open joists just as structural engineer finished
   asking where we'd gotten our cool hardhats, black
   fiberglass domes with welders' mask mountings exposed.
   Cranial prophylaxis worthy of architect's tender
   neurological archive: Rorty and Spivak competing with AIA
   standards for diminishing dendrite rights.

   Would a taxonomy of urban effluents classify this Harlem
demo
   stream somewhere between Gowanus Canal toxic irridescence
   and fetal corpses rotting in Fresh Kills landfill? Socially
   constructed detritus -- technological, sexual -- by any
   other name would never smell sweet.

   Standing there in elevator pit excavation, we contemplated
   century-old granite footings recently undermined by
   undersupervised, underpayed, underskilled south-asian
   laborers -- using masters' tools to bring down the master's
   house, spiting a multiplicity of postcolonial master texts:
   NYC building code, architect's documents governing
   excavation.

   Earlier that week, under similar circumstances, building
   across town had gone down in front of evening news cams.
City
   got voyeur's peep of apartment interiors exposed by
   inexorable fall of brick party wall -- Museum of Modern Art
   giftshop towel still drying on curtain rod in apartment 3D,
   and cantilevering off IKEA bookshelves: S, M, L, and XL in
   ascending order of collapsing architectural desire.