Perfume Dioramas

Elaine Equi

WE MARK OUR PLACE AND IT MARKS US

I enter the building—the room—

by a door, then another door.

But it enters me through the air

I breathe in

its commingling of human and animal,

mineral and chemical, cooking and debris.

A building is made in no small part

of air.

Yoko Ono tells us to bottle the air

at different hours,

and also to send smell signals

by wind.

Today is apples, smoke,

tentacles of vomit

leftover on the sidewalk

as I fumble for my keys.

No shape

takes place

in time

without smell.

MY GRANDMOTHER’S GLASS SKYLINE

Shalimar

Emeraude

Tigress

gave her bungalow

in Chicago

an exotic air.

As a child,

looking up

at the geometry

of bottles

on her dresser,

I thought each

a liquid city—

and fragrance

the real “magic carpet”

to carry me there.

How wise the wizard

must have been

to shrink and imprison

a forest, an ocean,

a mountain—

a whole kingdom

in these glass towers.

PSYCHO-SCENTUAL

I once had a therapist

who practiced

olfactory analysis—

often declaring,

about any difficult situation,

person, or emotion I brought up:

“It stinks. It really stinks.

That just stinks all over the place.”

He had a small windowless office

where oddly (I thought)

he continually burned

a vanilla-scented candle,

perhaps to infuse a more pleasing

mental attitude in his clients,

or as a form of self-protection

from the noxious cloud

of their negative energy.

It was a big deal for me

(never good at setting boundaries)

to ask him to please refrain

from keeping it lit during our sessions

as it aggravated my allergies.

He gladly complied,

but the smell of burnt sugar,

like an alter ego,

always lingered, and often

I found myself clearing my throat

as I struggled to find

the right words—and air—

to describe my experience.

THE BASEMENT LAUNDRY ROOM SMELLS

Like a combination of damp and dry things:

dirty socks, disinfectant, drains,

dust blown about by fans,

air freshener, fabric softener,

the cardboard smell of boxes

stacked up, each harboring the ghost smell

of what it used to contain,

the newspaper smell,

the broken smell of old furniture

abandoned and soon to be carted off.

LIKE FORM, FRAGRANCE FOLLOWS FUNCTION

Not always literally—

banks don’t really smell

of money.

Of credit, perhaps,

a deferral of smell

borrowed against the future.

And doesn’t one find

in government buildings,

the muffled odor of bureaucracy?

Scent is invisible architecture,

a binding together of place

with diffuse beams.

I cannot think of

gothic cathedrals

as other than ornate

incense burners.