by ANDREW CLEARY
It’s too dead for this still life, it would distract
from the plump, peeled ham I have given a sepia sheen
or the bread roll, split and pocked with its memories
of air the baker laced in her kneading. It flew, I can
tell, this pheasant, with favor to its bent wing,
injured before the shot broke it; by contrast this herring
smoked at the wharf, dim warehouse windows meting sun
to its scales, arrived in bronzed simplicity. This dead
pheasant, clipped and torn, would, I say, contrast–
let me see it again. It might, I think. Off this cloth,
in tripartite fold: the abbot was here yesterday, winking
at my landscapes. I would rather erase him. Give
the bird, I’ve decided now. It’s fine for a nail, he said;
so, you are with me: which of us will be remembered?
From Issue 11
ANDREW CLEARY lives in St. Paul. His poetry has previously been published in Sugar House Review and Willows Wept Review.