Routine Fables

Two anxious women from both sides of the bayou describe life and death. A year of weekly dumb sculpture poems from Elaine Bradford and Sara Cress.

[routinefables]

Imaginal discs

I am elemental soup, doing time to decide what I’ll be next.

The purist parts remain -- hunger, humor, color -- the rest dissolves.

Atoms are assigned, new patterns emerge from old, fibrous walls.

Ravenous, mad, vibrant, stumbling from a prison, but now I can fly.

[routinefables]

Cocoon

I built myself a cocoon it took a year of gathering comforts close to my skin to toughen me into something else. It’s lonely here and I fear I am growing accustomed to just me talking to me and afraid of other voices. I know this can’t last. Wings must emerge or else they die.

[routinefables]

Feb. 16 (Broken pipes)

Water betrayed us those nights. Expanded, split copper, ran down the backs of walls, rotting and ruining, then gone.

We gathered snow to flush toilets, imagining ourselves pioneers while the city fell further into a prehistoric time.

Showers a precious commodity, taken in unknown homes. Drinking water handed out with the softness of charity. I don’t know who to blame: Is it this city? Is it just this life, an angry God smiting me? Or is it a failed state, unable to provide?

[routinefables]

Feb. 14 (Power down)

I held the word “snow!” on the tip of my tongue, not daring to swallow for fear that it would melt along with my dream of a rare taste of winter. I waited. I stayed up so late, stepping outside every hour in my thin coat. A man and his dogs shivered by, I waved and said, “snow?” He said no, just pellets of ice. At 2 a.m., I captured it: real flakes flying in the streetlight that soon went dark. Though powerless, my house gathered so much white I didn’t need light to see it.

[routinefables]

Weathered

The tide leaves lines on my face that sleep can no longer erase and I find mysterious bruises that mark me vivid brown-blue. Do I lash myself in dreams? Endless gloopy horror stories: loss, floods, bloody teeth, sex, phone dead, I’m dead, you’re dead, maskless heathens screaming in the grocery, pimples, rashes, hives. The worry I thought I sloughed survives, rushes through when light is dim, pushing through my paper skin.

[routinefables]

Week 3: Inauguration

I watched the figures swear and march and wave, every moment waiting for something that I did not want to define: blood? bombs? knives? The country held its breath and I could feel it. My lungs compressed like vacuum bags of wool sweaters, there was no room for air, no point. Air would have been a dizzying release that I had not yet earned.

There was a woman being sworn in. My receptors dulled, it barely registered. But in a faint heartbeat, I was revived, I came a little bit back to life, and sent up, out, down a prayer to all womankind.

[routinefables]

Week 2: Inoculation

I offered my arm for the betterment of all. A vulnerable pioneer, for once, my fatness gained me entry to glorious priority. Now science races inside my sluggish skin, as it has done many times before, to find the puzzle piece that undoes fragility.

Though it barely changes this quieted life, and I long for the breath of strangers, of others, it is the start of a journey to light.

[routinefables]

Routine Fables 2021: Week 1

Insurrection

Rise up, my fiercest men, heed the call of your fathers beckoning you to live seditiously. You will be ushered in as kings to smear these stolen thrones with your thick colognes. Let the cameras roll, prove to me your loyalty, leave no marble face untouched, your fingerprints now mine, you must tear down these halls in my name. But, my brave patriots, please sign with your own.

[routinefables]

Hello, Texas Vignette Art Fair!

Hello to everyone who has seen us or will see us at the Texas Vignette Art Fair, which has its VIP opening tonight and will be open to the public April 10-14. 

More info about Routine Fables: 

Houstonians Elaine Bradford, sculptor, and Sara Cress, poet, set out to produce work on a weekly basis in 2017. Elaine created a sculpture and then Sara responded to the sculpture with a poem. The project was completed on December 31, 2017, when they tried (and failed) to set the final sculpture on fire.

All 52 pieces and poems were on display at Lawndale Art Center in Houston during the summer of 2018.

The entirety of the project hits on many topics that were particular to 2017: both artists turned 40, Sara’s home was flooded by Hurricane Harvey, Donald Trump took office, many men were accused of sexual assault and harassment, and the world just generally seemed to fall apart all over the place.

Routine Fables pieces are for sale!

The sculptures are for sale and there is an option to have the poem written in some form or on a wall. Email [email protected] for inquiries.

There is a book! 

If you would like to see the entire collection, there is a book of all 52 pieces and poems. It is $40 and you can purchase it here.

More work by the artists:

Sara Cress has another project called Breaking Poems, which you can follow on Facebook. 

Elaine Bradford can be found on Instagram at elainebradford_studio.

[routinefables]

Week 3: Progressing

This is Purgatory: a script from a doctor for palliative drugs to soothe, to increase hunger, to boost. But it isn’t like living, like craving or needing food after running, or the sweet rest of a long, good day. We carry you from room to room, around street corners where you once liked to walk. We offer you to the sun when it peeks through the clouds, you make yourself flat in the grass, absorbing the heat, in the last few days you have left.

[routinefables]

Week 2: January bluebonnet

First to a party that won’t start for months, you are a beautiful pest to the host. A startling indigo dress says too much, a mouthful of troublesome boasts. A worm underground must have pushed you out, a premature shove from the nest. Alas, you will die in the next winter freeze, back in the soil you shall rest.

[routinefables]

Sober

The tide rises. Waves overtake me as I fake meditation, trying to ride out desire. The first day Is a loud, grinding want. My joints need oiling, having forgotten how to be present. One part longs to be lost in a fog, but the other drags my depleted body to the light so I can grow again.

[routinefables]

Routine Fables: The book, the show, everything you need to know

THE BOOK: Routine Fables is now a book! It features all 52 sculptures and poems, with an introduction by the Houston Chronicle’s Allyn West and a rad title illustration by artist Rene Cruz.

*Limited edition* pre-sale: We are producing 10 limited edition copies of the book with a handmade cover by Elaine and a personalized poem by Sara. The price is $100. Click here to purchase.

Regular pre-sale: Leading up to the Routine Fables show at Lawndale Art Center (details below), we are offering the book for $30. After May 24, the price will increase to $40. Click here to purchase.

Shipping for either option is $5. If you see either of us regularly or you plan to attend the show opening on May 25, please choose the pick-up option instead.

If you prefer to use Venmo or Paypal, please email Elaine at [email protected] and she will send you an invoice.

THE SHOW: The entire project will be on display at Lawndale Art Center (4912 S. Main St. in Houston’s museum district), May 25-July 29. The show opening is May 25, 6-8 p.m.

There will also be a poetry reading and discussion of the project at Lawndale on Sunday, July 15, 2-3 p.m.

[routinefables]

Lucky

It didn’t look like luck, shit falling down like it does, ruining days and clothes, changing the course of my life. I can’t get excited to start again, everything still broken. But I kept a shard of each day to use as kindling on the last. I hear you say “lucky” again as I burn myself clean.

[routinefables]

We know that it's probably magic

The delicate dance begins with I know you, don’t I? Tiptoes lead to flat-footed truths then leaps of faith: I have this bruise, it matches yours! Waltzing in our separate homes, tapping out messages to aliens or ghosts or God or to each other, we are brought back to a vibrant life. Connected, we bridge the water: a rainbow just waiting for a storm to reveal it.

[routinefables]

Father Time 2017

You were chosen on day one to carry the weight of the year. And this? This was a bad one. The powerful never tell you they are sorry, just keep adding anchors to your undereyes until sometime in July you start to sense it: this heft is more than you have ever carried before. Every murder is a pinched nerve, every baby born steals your breath, every time that one man speaks your middle finger aches to pull a trigger. Every family pulled apart rips a hair from your flesh. Every polar bear spotted on a green field stabs you in the gut. Every time a bell rings, you lurch closer to a cliff. Every day the tumor takes more. By year’s end no one sees you:  a ball of man, a twisted rack crying for release. You can count it now in hours, then minutes, then seconds.

[routinefables]

War is over

I marched into battle in mid-October ready for months in the field. Lobbing nativity scenes through the windows of coffee shops, sneering at strangers in Santa suits, correcting grocery store clerks as they wished me happiness. Over the weeks my daydreams turned florid, evil was everywhere, loudspeakers told me to fight harder, longer, that we were winning! I took to the comments, I took to the schools, I took to the department stores, I called them all fools! The spoils of war were sweet, again, I joined my sons for the exchange of gifts: sweaters, candy, socks. We ate a turkey, whole. I turned down the lights, the candles twinkled, I knew I had won another war.