Duchamp's Nude came eddying down the staircase carrying 
       a chessboard & some sort of dictionary. 'Your move,' she said. 
       I started with 'angular'. She won in less than ten moves. Kept 
       on winning. Even when I painted the board red she beat me. 
       It wasn't until I started opening with Smurfs or the sigils of
       YouTube & Facebook, things she'd never seen before, that I 
       began to be competitive. I finally won when I brought Nelson
       Mandela forward. That's when Daddy stepped in. I never won
       again. 'A readymade Mark', he called me.

A back-cover note for:
les échiquiers effrontés  
Luna Bisonte Prods; Columbus, Ohio; 2018.

The note above is a deep-felt acknowledgement to Marcel Duchamp who played a significant role in the germination of this series of visual poetry pieces that use the structure of the chessboard as their template.

The first one I did was called The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, appeared in brief 31, in October 2004, & was the only one that could be said to have a differential title — apart from two not-that-much later works that used the third (?) piece with its four middle horizontal lines denuded & then followed two games between the masters Casablanca & Bernstein in 1914 to replicate how the board would look after twelve moves — before I defaulted to the words in the top left & bottom right squares as de facto titles.

The works are done over several days. The words are chosen at random, from random sources — those pebbles that rattle around in the brain & are suddenly cast up on the beach; items noted from the online news; current events, e.g. solstice; words provoked by other words —garrote arose because I was slicing up carrots for dinner; words that have no apparent reason for their appearance.

Phrases crept in, & names, book titles, trade marks, symbols, other visuals. But there has always been adherence to the original concept — sense is accidental. With 64 squares, there is always the chance that some contiguous ones may resemble some semblance of rational — or irrational — thought. Take Jim Leftwich’s engagement with Polymer Codex at Galatea Resurrects.  

So, make of them what you will. & keep in mind where they come from.

      Today the post-
      woman brought
      me a check-
      ered board from
      Rrose Sélavy.