John Poch

Still Life

The vanity of flower, fruit, and meat

makes light the lie of smell and touch and eat.

The painter represents, so we believe.

Another way it works: some flies conceive…

they fancy themselves painters, brush with their legs

and drop like pills of living paint their eggs

that burst with life and spread their mortal purpose

over the canvas of the body, the surface

they’ve been given. Long gone, flown, the flies

(it’s conceptual art in their mind’s eyes)

now dream of those surreal paint cans spilling

their shiny, invisible dyes. At first, thrilling,

it looks like a seething mass of reds and creams,

a monster coming to life, but still life.

It gleams

and goes ghostly to always the same painting

—a skeleton emerges who loves the fainting

and truth with all his teeth that sleep is no surprise.

It’s a painting of sleep for the dreamer with eyes.

Caleb A.P. Parker