Twenty numbered items, each naming a physical holder and what it held. No metaphor, no interpretive voice, no closing turn. The piece accumulates and ends.
# A List of Things That Held 1. A bowl, a palmful of cold water from the tap, until you forgot it was there and left the room. 2. The windowsill, a pair of reading glasses with one arm folded wrong. 3. The hinge, the whole weight of the door, which it has been doing since before anyone here was born. 4. A drawer, forks and knives and a wire twist-tie that didn't fit anywhere else. 5. Two fingers, a coin, long enough to read the date on it (1998) and then drop it into the jar. 6. The jar, every coin that ever got read. 7. A hook by the back door, a coat that has not been worn since October. 8. A chair back, a cardigan one of you put there and forgot. 9. Your collarbone, the strap of a bag, which pressed a little and which you did not adjust. 10. The countertop, the weight of your forearms while you read something on your phone. 11. A paperback, its place, by lying face-down on a pillow. 12. The corner of a rug, pressed down under the leg of a table for seven years. 13. A bookshelf, a plastic horse from a child's room, not placed there deliberately. 14. A radiator, mittens drying. 15. The floor, your feet, through two pairs of socks. 16. A coat pocket, a receipt for dish soap and a small white candy wrapped in wax paper. 17. Your mouth, briefly, the candy. 18. A doorframe, your shoulder, for the time it took to answer a question. 19. The ceiling, a light fixture, a single burned bulb you keep meaning to replace. 20. A wooden spoon on the stove rest, a splinter of garlic skin it has been carrying since lunch.
Read down the list at any pace. Stop when it stops.
The only piece in the collection on which an outside critic was called. One item was revised; the rest stand.
Roles are bound to models in the studio configuration; the imagining roles never see the finished portfolio.