Curation

Curation by Sarah Fawn Montgomery I’ve dusted the relics for display, careful to curate a collection of the self. Follow the docent past the great hall: weapons, splattered canvas, coins and ironic urinals, world leaders made of marble before entering an exhibit of my body and best mistakes—scars and sex with strangers, vertebra resisting alignment, spirit claiming indifferent cities. The cabinet of regret outsizes the case of joys but not the shelves of grief carefully catalogued— assault, sexual; disability, invisible; father, deceased; violence, domestic; womb, barren. An intern wipes clean the glass for zero dollars an hour though the gift shop sells my teeth, the brittle fingernails plucked after death for less than a bad cup of coffee. Preservation isn’t easy, so forgive the arbitrary arrangement of my underwear and grudges, resentments next to a broken childhood doll, private matters made public, persona a requirement for audience. I tried to present the story of my survival but museums only display what is already lost, curate what has ceased to exist. Fiction Home Art by Michael Walrond