Michael Benedikt

Kitchen Scenes

On the label of one of the bottles atop your refrigerator in the kitchen from which you take calcium tablets—the vitamin you use to settle your nerves a little after all your domestic quarrels—is a picture of a smiling couple half-naked & blissfully running hand-in-hand through a field of lush green grass. Therefore, wouldn’t it be logical to expect to find, on the label of any bottle atop the ’fridge from which you don’t take calcium, a picture of an unhealthy-looking couple in a kitchen painted a glaring bright red, like one of the chambers of hell; wearing body armor & threatening each other using steak knives for spears and frying pans for shields.

(1976 & 2006)