Artist Statement
Dayne’s writing focuses on detailing his own feelings and emotions while expanding on the impulsive and intrusive thoughts that occur while they’re happening. He hopes to push the boundaries of the “acceptable,” playing into the darker features and desires of the human mind, that are present in all of us.
Her kids need shoes, the bills need to be paid, but if you asked her, she’ll shrug her shoulders and tell you “It’s the first of the month, and tomorrow there won’t be anything left,” so she has to go shopping today. She’ll ask the deli for only a half pound of store brand cheese, because it’s four dollars a pound today instead of three, and the whole milk is already gone so she’ll take a gallon of 2% and put it between the Frosted Flakes and a four-pound bag of “wing flingz.” A wheel on the cart would drag on the ground, squealing as she filled the basket with heavy cans, plastic packages, and cardboard boxes. Only the essentials.
She won’t think about her grandmother, dumping the frozen meat in a plastic bowl of water, stained from years of use. She’ll massage the flesh with her hands after it sat, gunk turning the water mucky and red, then pick up a piece to peel the skin back, exposing its pink and yellow insides.
“Extra fat,” she’d say, if you asked her, holding the meat with one hand and a knife in the other, scraping the yellow off between the blade and her thumb. She’ll do each piece that way, sometimes scratching scaly skin off the bottom of a drum, or ripping greasy feathers from the flats. She won’t think about her mother, doing the same thing for a family three times the size, or her grandmother, and how she had bought her chicken without government assistance.
Maybe she got hers fresher, picking a hen from the yard and twisting its head ‘round, unblinking. Maybe she’d cut its throat and hang it to drain, then take it indoors, and would be covered with feathers and gunk by the time it was ready to cook. It would only cost her an evening and an old dress. A chicken like that? At least $5 a pound.
“It needed to be cleaned,” she’d say, if you asked her. “It’s how my mom taught me.” And it was how her grandmother taught her.
