Zeuxis, who represented some grapes, painted so naturally
that the birds flew towards the spot where the painting was exhibited.
-Pliny the Elder
This is that art which can veil without will
the imprimatura, the first whisht, the swiftbird
tucked of wing, dropping or rising through
this fallen forest, tucking its tone into morning.
This is after the cutting, stretching, tacking linen
to the board, after the starlings elicited vineyards
on the hill. Below the hill, the stones will be cold
as the measured swish of decerebrated tadpoles,
ignoring algae wafers that mushroom in the scum.
We are baby frogs, reft of want, wanting something
like a sacrum, a vesica piscis, some sort of nimbus,
some impetus. But we’re busy with indifference.
One must cut out so much — sugar silk acids —
to feel the fizz of dopamine in the grass, its element
of cat tongue. Those abrasions are worth living for.
Wild grapes that look fatal as if they were painted
with Demerol are worth living for. There’s something
to admire there before the taste. There was something
there before taste and the knowledge of them tasting.
There should be a reintroduction to this, a meeting
of minds arranged with the palimpsest. With the swift
we dip for tinted grapes. It’s all mimicry at a distance.
Grey Sparrow Journal 