A close-up black and white photograph of a well-groomed, muscular groin, the American flag tattooed in colour just above the right pelvic bone. A fully erect penis, with the words "Fuck Iraq" graffittied along the shaft. You cannot picture it in your head without also conceiving of its obscenity. In that sense, it is a perfect marriage of form and content, medium and message.
    
    * *

Desirous of expressing her state of mind precisely, the Princess-Chancellor embroidered upon her inauguration gown the image of a butterfly caught in the faintest web of silk.

    * *

He takes the time to get his affairs in order.  All his clothes, stuffed into a 28” suitcase, are left in locker 24 at the National Museum, the key consigned to the Chief Curator under the name of a famous guerilla artist.  His laptop, with all his secrets, is being couriered to an old lover in Batan; any attempt to open a file would result in a botnet-borne bear run on the exchange.   The incriminating manuscript and accompanying photographs, copied by hand, find their way to publishers bothwithin and outside the regime under the guise of a cookbook.  So he is able to finish one more cigarette, and admire the calligraphy of ant-trails on the ceiling, before the knocking comes, past midnight.

   * *

Every bullock sold, every slave redeemed, every barrel of grain emptied, all his material wealth entrusted to the safety of gold.  It took a week to find him at the bottom of the murky reservoir, gleaming.

    * *
 
For the third session, she had them commit beautiful, ritual suicide. Enrolment resumed the next week. Classes were paid for in advance.  At the fourth session she brought in guest speakers: past students, teleconferencing from the afterlife. Forget art, they advised. Live your life like the flame and the dance. It is what gives the hellbent their succour, and the heavenbound patience to endure eternity.

    * *

You misunderstand the gift, he cautions, with the patience of one who had outspoken death,  arms aloft and apart, two bare feet set firmly on thin air.  These wounds of mine are now your wounds. Flesh of my flesh, the fever in my blood will be your fever too.  It will not be our selves, but our shadows that will conquer time.

     * *

However carefully he tried to crease or stiffly press the paper cranes, they soon crumpled under the steady rain.   He left them on the temple steps nevertheless, trusting a Goddess of sufficient potency and inclination to read the firm and fervent prayer within the sodden mess.

     * *
It is time to ask yourself where your loyalities lie, she whispers, as she points the revolver at your temple, unfastens your robe and beckons you to the giant screen, while behind you the chanting rises to a frantic pitch.