Legend is a mixed-reality wearable art collection, five looks that contain an augmented reality trigger. When scanned, each reveals a portion of a poem. In swirls of image and memory from hundreds of hours driving up and down Indiana highways, this text reveals a story about a search for solid ground, joy and trans community.
Special thanks to guest designers Favilinda, Gnivol Loving, and Frank Peralta and editors Sara Carminati and Su Nadeau.
Modeled by Hedilio, Gigi, Frank, Celeste, Riley and Jojo.
Music by FETTER.
Lighting and photos by ColectivoMultipolar. Other images as marked.
Made possible by the 2022 DCASE Individual Artist Program Grant and Chicago Artists Coalition ENVISION Grant.
Look 1
This is wealth, pancake in a pizza box
You sneak me a free big coffee
out the smoker's basement door
Your boss won't come since
some cook sprayed his name there
Huge, and a threat:
LYLE
Water from the hose sucked straight in a cloud
I'm falling off the porch and your dog's drunk
Another cornfield princess
interviewing in a Space Ghost crop tee
A gift of four cinderblocks
on the sidewalk between us
The first time I drove thru
the windfarm on 65
some boy in the front seat
his soul hanging out his mouth
I got crying cause
it's lazy to say but
a turbine is the angel we got
Look 2
Four hours to Fort Wayne
dilated on Xbox and the pure
and only
green rising off the fields
Ass-half on the curb between the
road shower and Arby's where
no body ever walks so
the grass is gorgeous clean,
rattled with centipedes
so hot I can smell them
Spun out,
Honda carving dawn hills
to let the geese out
Get my boots pecked to shit
by some rooster,
name of Bret Michaels
Can't say what nature put here,
whole trees wrapped in webs like
sticky, writhing legs of lamb
White, and stinking of short wet fur
Worms born here drop wetly
each slap of a BB
loosed off the porch slab
which we hard won from the landlord
at our party, Halloween,
when some girl broke her leg heading out
and our queen—
Broken Leg, now, still crawling in pain on the grass
—throws open the door and screams
GET
OFF
MY
LAWN
Look 3
Application denied,
no dykes
I mean dogs
No apron
Crumb coat crushed
dough-headed panic
to miss a 56 dollar work day
woke up above the rug
on my dad's empty air mattress
piping swirls in the papery dark
1200 cupcakes later
I'm out. Straight
to the apartment we broke up in
and everyone's raging in it
The sun's burned out,
Chicago and back in one night
and never going home,
straight
to your donut-delivery shift
before the predawn men
who come
before work
You sleep the drive
In my unclosing eyes
angels spin their arms in the dark
Photo: Brittany Sowacke
Look 5
Dandelion juiced in my fist
Queen anne’s lace, white and purple clover,
oil smoke when the hood pops and
you see what I killed
I quit the cupcake job
and the next
and the next
Coal-burned carpet
Mad dog punch
Trucker speed
Two gummy bears kissing
You cry for some
woman at your factory
who’s never missed a day
One heron lingers
to tempt the hunter
and the flock escapes.
Application denied, “no
demonstrable income in the city”
No oil change this year
No haircut, no brush
The unspeakable,
to not work— even one night, or one day
I kiss my last honeysuckle, and last wild onion
Dry year, corn so thin it makes a blue space
and I can see the way through
Look 4
Feet in the pool of last summer’s apartment
Forkful off a A-Phi’s plate
A dream where my bones and guts
are crammed in a skin
shape of the letter P
and I hop around
looking for a cure
We burn your scalp with Tide,
then bleach, then clay
to fool the steel mill drug test,
get you out
No luck,
no luck
The pig-watching dog kills the pigs
Breakfast, lunch and dinner cake
cause it’s free,
boxes and boxes
You chuck the ice in your cup
at a car,
heckle DYKE from the backseat at
some bros japing home
I laugh cause
I’m in the car with you