Liquidity
by Chad Heltzel

1. 1.


2. Up for auction: a Greentown Glass
3. chocolate sawtooth dolphin candy dish


4. with fish top. Authentic:
5. ten teeth on each side


6. of the mouth. The depression
7. inside the dish follows


8. the tail’s curve. Manufacturing cracks
9. near the mouth: remnants of the cooling process.


10. Once, barrelsful sold for nickels apiece—
11. the cost of a bread loaf.


12. Green drinking glasses hidden
13. incentives in oat and detergent boxes.


14. Punch bowls and cups free
15. with oil changes. Prices, of course,


16. fluctuate—check a catalog for appraisal.
17. The dolphin today—


18. two thousand dollars, starting price.
19. Hold up your placard and make a bid.


20. Next: a cobalt blue cord drapery
21. cruet, then heirloom amethyst candle holders.


22. Collectors must confirm quality. Note
23. that not all pieces will sell at auction.


24. In my mother’s cabinet, a clear cake pedestal,
25. inherited from her great-grandmother.


26. A true antique, over a century old.
27. Be sure to check for bubbles


28. or molding marks. Families ate from these
29. pieces daily—look for utensil scratches.


30. Run a finger around the rim;
31. feel for chips. Avoid so-called sick glass


32. clouded by automatic dishwashers.
33. Evaporation rings can be removed;


34. lost luster is permanent.
35. Mother had assumed


36. the cake pedestal would carry value. On its surface,
37. bubbles rise from the base.


38. The pattern is neither clearly
39. floral nor geometric. Looked at from above,


40. its honeycombs, or leaves, radiate
41. to the center, then whirlpool


42. at the stand—
43. small, smaller, nothing.

1. 2.


2. Questions arise. How to account
3. for the discrepancies?


4. Certain glass may break
5. like a solid, but will flow


6. like a liquid if left on a table for a week.
7. A physicist deems it a supercooled liquid.


8. Other scientists claim the thickness
9. of antique windows’ bases


10. demonstrates that glass is liquid,
11. melting slowly over centuries


12. in cathedral panes. But if this were true,
13. we should also see pooling


14. in medieval telescopes, ancient Egyptian figurines.
15. When the blower spins the glass,


16. the edges are thicker. When mounting,
17. workers placed the panes


18. thick side down to stabilize them,
19. to prevent water from accumulating


20. in the lead cames at the base.
21. When windows are carelessly installed,


22. we find the thick side top-up.
23. In recent factory productions,


24. we see similar effects: where glass is emptied
25. on cooling tables to spread, it is always thicker


26. where it was poured. We deleted frozen
27. from the physicist’s words.


28. The professor said, Glass is a liquid
29. which has lost the ability to flow.

1. 3.


2. No records left—the factory destroyed.
3. The fire unexplained. The natural gas reserves


4. suddenly run dry. With nothing
5. to fire the furnaces, the operation was finished.


6. No one replicated the molds.
7. The company’s president


8. confiscated the family glass formulas.
9. A museum was opened


10. on the sixty-seventh anniversary of the fire.
11. Visitors can see the remaining


12. blue agate spooner there,
13. or the Holly Amber series,


14. the only one recognized
15. by the Museum of Modern Art.


16. Another exhibit explains how to tell
17. genuine productions from fakes.


18. This factory created designs in unusual colors—
19. emerald green, teal, canary yellow, cobalt.


20. No manufacturing records remain—
21. new letterhead soon announces


22. a chocolate glass orange tree hairpin holder.
23. In replicas, pinks may appear


24. shades darker, even orange.
25. Weight and thickness is key—


26. the glass becomes heavier with time.
27. Cookie jar handles sometimes


28. elongate, sharpen at the edges.
29. Look for utensil scratches—an indication


30. of authenticity. Some plates, when stacked,
31. should look like the letter V:


32. an optical illusion. Experts researching paintings
33. have discovered methods for eliminating


34. visual guesswork—X-ray and infrared technology,
35. chemical pigment analyses. A hair from


36. Jackson Pollock’s balding head lodged in the paint
37. can be matched to DNA in his studio.


38. Don’t be misled, however:
39. probability may still best determine


40. composition dates. In this trade,
41. there can be no certainty.

1. 4.


2. At a party in Boston,
3. the family poured an inferior Chablis


4. into the crystal, but all in attendance
5. remarked on its sweetness.


6. The husband stood by his wife’s side.
7. She recalled a story to the guests


8. in which she had walked to the pond
9. on her family’s estate


10. one summer day in her childhood.
11. Before she reached its bank,


12. she’d caught her dress on a low briar.
13. Unaware, she leaned toward the water


14. and heard the fabric tear.
15. At that moment, something in her broke—


16. she imagined being told her parents died
17. and she would be forced to live


18. in a faraway orphanage. She ran home
19. crying and could not stop until


20. her mother held her and she fell
21. asleep through her tears.


22. To that day, she said,
23. she could not stand the sound


24. of anything tearing, not even a piece of paper.
25. The guests looked into their glasses


26. and drank the wine. They did not know
27. the harm of ingesting so little.


28. Lead, which handily bonds
29. with fine wines and liquors,


30. has since been discovered in excavated shards
31. of fine crystal decanters,


32. popular among the upper class
33. in the Depression after the war.


34. When the husband lay on his deathbed
35. a few years later, a nurse dropped a camphor bottle,


36. the fumes dissipating throughout the room.
37. At that moment, she thought she heard him:


38. I cannot bear the sound
39. of breaking glass—cannot bear—

1. 5.


2. In the Gulf of Mexico, archaeologists
3. date to the War of 1812


4. this unnamed ship’s wreck. It carried
5. perfectly preserved telescopes, hourglasses, compasses,


6. buttons, pieces of a pocket watch.
7. The objects are measured with lasers,


8. labeled on maps, assigned unique bin numbers.
9. Mustard jars embossed LONDON


10. match jars from another site—
11. the word and image allow


12. scientists to estimate the ship’s age.
13. Still, we do not know its origin,


14. its destination. For simplicity’s sake,
15. newspapers call it the Mardi Gras Shipwreck.


16. We assume we will find answers in the ordering,
17. though we still need measurements for the losses:


18. where the magnets would have pointed,
19. which comet lost to its observer,


20. on whose mantel a timepiece would be placed.
21. In the depths, slipping sand


22. mimics the ocean’s sweep in soft tides.
23. Sunken to the ocean floor over two centuries ago,


24. the telescopes’ leather cases
25. have survived intact. The same cannot be said


26. for the ship’s cannon—the original iron
27. has degraded to such a degree


28. that only the organisms residing inside
29. hold it together when lifted from the water.