A Readymade by Lucia Perillo

A Readymade

by Lucia Perillo

Out of nowhere the phone rings, and the voice

of a fat man answers: Hell-low bay-bee . . .

each syllable its own word. “Chantilly Lace”:

a song not sung so much as fumbled through,

a manifesto of befuddlement and pleasure—call it

a little game between “I” and “me” said Marcel Duchamp

when asked why he’d hang a porcelain urinal

in the Grand Central exhibition, where people

would be expecting to see . . . well, something else.

Something not a urinal. It is a matter ...