Six Bells

By Carron Little 

            for Judie Anderson

Life started with a brush,
Caressing pigments over fibres
Joined in hands, two became four,
Horns grew life through walls.
Sacred milk became six,
Six pairs of hands became eight
The light keeps pouring,
Milk over water, water over stone

Six shifts, Six pairs of golden horns
Six plates at Six am
The bell rings
Stamping the pigment
The sound rings like a marching band
Printing the daily news
Each letter a historic imprint
The headline “Printers Quit!”
Replaced by the blue ghost

The digital machine moves in to take hold
A hydroponic change brings in a new age
Stacking the cairns in geo formation
Learning quark and illustrator
Library halls become digital walls
The marching band of the newsroom
Loses its song
Between black ink and micro-chips
The Newsroom quits!
The battle of industry and monopoly play
While the last song of the marching band fades

The bell rings at Six am
Six horns, Six stones and Six hands
The mighty Sioux stands over history
The walk begins
A slow march
As the tectonic plates shift again
The design world appears in a blue screen,
Microchips become flies,
Silently watching, silently listening
Stamping the stories into history

Six stones, Six bells, Six golden horns

Based in Chicago, Carron Little grew up in Britain receiving a BA First Class Honors from Goldsmiths College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has been teaching in Performance since 2014. Little starts her practice by interviewing people and that becomes the starting point for poetry and performance. She has exhibited, performed and screened films of her work locally and internationally. She is currently working on the public engagement project Spare Rib Revisited that she developed in Lucerne, Switzerland (2016) and Liverpool U.K. (2017). This year she has performed her poetry at Burren College of Art, Ireland; Sarajevo Winter Festival, Bosnia; Grand Rapids; Berlin Performing Arts Fesitval, Germany; and Loge Theater, Lucerne, Switzerland. Follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/carron.little.5 and visit her website: carronlittle.com.

Digital newspaper stands image courtesy of Mosman Library, Australia.