Still Life with Completely Normal Amount of Foxes
It’s not June where the painter sits. There are layers of
old figures to sort through, tinny discs of dented light.
The first fox skulks toward the viewer, blue-tongued
slack. Its eyes are pearls or stamens, all oil. The
painter has something tugging at his gut. It’s not yet
time for the third fox to settle. Auburn glass in the
hands of a thief. We come to the fruit with softened
gazes: hollowed melon, balled-up petals. Something
lower down, darker, a beetle’s perfect back, his
useless antlers angled eastward. The paint has
something it needs to express alone. Twelve foxes
cross beyond the frame. We’re not easy, the living.
Bronze Vessel with Perforated Basin
I have three days to pull myself together. There are
stains on my nice suit jacket. There are horrible
wounds on my hands. I have just a broken window
and a birdsong and a bad dream. I didn’t want to keep
spitting the sadness out into the room with you,
blotting the air with those glossy ruined syllables.
What moved in the dark all night, only oranges on
their boughs. What if someone is watching from the
corner of the ring, blue and fierce? I know a true
magic, but not what it wants from me. There is
something here you cannot see. Some quivering body
bursting open at its dumb seams all at once.
Jarid McCarthy is a poet-playwright and the director of Empty Room, the last spectral playhouse. His work has appeared in Olney, Afternoon Visitor, Foglifter, and elsewhere. He’s crouched somewhere along the Pacific Coast Highway pretending to be trampled poppies.
