Pianola: a tic, voluntarily offered; a tick involuntarily plucked. An oyster cache, shucking, proffering, one after the other. Bowed and curlicued as pinch pot catchments, buffering precious things - pearls, squirming meat laced with sand. // Pianola: an automaton. A motion of tenderness passed between the perceiver and the perceived. // Pianola: a stutter, a lisp and the tongue between gapped front teeth. Not the therapist, not the bully - but clammy palm and snotty sleeve. Kid, kindness, kinship. // Pianola, pianola. A smatter of consonants and the constant scatter (I’ve asked you so many times). // Pianola: lay your hand in mine and your cards on the table and your arms. Down. // Pianola: “the original pattern”. // Pianola: a recurring dream, a subsurface compulsion. The undulation in one’s psyche and the psychic ululation in one’s throat. // Pianola: moon worship, pianola, the original pattern, pianola. // Pianola: heart flutter/murmur/beat. // Pianola: An instrument on which a dirge is composed. Wild horse hoof quake thump. Jingle jangle fingernail lustre. A living cataract/I saw God/waiata/pianola. A flying fox tethered to Te Aroha. // Pianola: “It’s like just the fuckin’ regularness of life is too fuckin’ hard for me or somethin’.” // Pianola: to pick the dirt from underneath one’s fingernails. // Pianola: the heat between flesh and hide. Punching through. Clay as dough, dough as flesh, flesh as sentience, sentience as sleep. // Pianola: a cartoon glimmer in your lover’s teeth. A light dimmer for love. A pot on simmer and a couple of eggs, buoyant. // Pianola: you could set your watch to it - pianola.

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By Frances Jansen van Rensburg