Lorenzo Conte

A Note on Quality Assurance

On Thursdays we go down to the warehouse Donnabedian & Sons Fruit Distributors to get our crate of oranges. Old Man is sitting on an overturned bucket sorting through pink slips Fifty Five Pounds Ten and Two Twenny sees you says Follow Me Hows Wife sees me and says Youve Growns’m Son Follow Me. Together we pass through the metal doors, into the refrigerated room filled with pallets of fruit. You crouch low, open a crate, say to me, see. I watch you rip off a piece of the rind and hear you say to test an orange taste the peel

I keep returning to this—

orange segment skins
needle stick.

these last few days

citric piss.

I have taken

to biting at my lower lip.

 

Asteroid Chorus

                    and the air is filled with static amplified:

                    listen to the


                                                         / disco disco

                    I mean

                    breathe the

                                                  / music music disco man

                                               / Public Neon

                    Pink Volume

                                          / race dance DJ evolution electro force

                                        / dance electronic sneaky girl

                    there it is,

                    crackling—

                             / say I’m more. I’m Young. heyyo, I’m God.

 

Lorenzo Conte lives in Chicago.