Mikaela Castledine #14 Dali in the studio Carroll on the stairs

On the first cool morning
after the heat wave
I venture up
into the disorder of the studio

(where for more than a week
I just threw things
from halfway up the stairs
with my feet in the air conditioning
and my head reaching the weather formed
balloon of accumulated heat
feeling like some eat me Alice
grown big enough to be in two worlds
bumping against the ceiling)

and so the surrealists have been

everything
lying where I dumped it
during the Christmas clean up downstairs
has formed assemblages and readymades

or looks distorted
as if there was a melting
of ductile objects onto the metal table tops
and then a congealing
in this
the first cool morning