fox moves into the new year
with a fresh set of restitutions
he knows you can’t unhairy traumas of old
but can maybe a free bite to eat
fox is good at forgiveness
or at least feigning it
the elm that split his hem
the worms in his gut
the men by and large who have tried to kill him
or hire him into the private sector
are all his savory forgottens
what fox holds is the right to be
deloused in the garden of earthly delights
to be shaved of superfluous carryings
fox in the garden of untimely sorrows
fox in the fjord of near misses
fox as realia lit yellow on the projector
didn’t fox learn a damn thing
at least empirically where not to stuff his snout
is fox just a kid at a chemistry set
a little dense to combustion variables
oblivious to his own foreboding
fox in the cemetery of merriment
fox in the cesspool of futile kindness
a year to a fox is a forever
more fever and deer ticks
hallucinations from the hemlock
and poor decisions no matter how fastidious
fox on the olive branch reading adorno with his tongue
fox crying with the baby at the bottom of the well
who will fox vex next
how will he escape the next onion patch
the next wall street thug
the bay area technocrat
fox is masterless
a volatile transference
he may swallow a flower of mulberry
and shit a silken tunic
he may collapse a tenement
by eating all its termites
he is the hero we all deserve just look
how quickly he lends his blood to our boots
***
Eric Tyler Benick is author of the chapbooks I Don’t Know What an Oboe Can Do (No Rest Press, 2020) and The George Oppen Memorial BBQ (The Operating System, 2019), as well as Co-founding Editor of Ursus Americanus Press. His work has appeared in 3 a.m. Magazine, Washington Square Review, Vassar Review, Bat City Review, Entropy, Ghost Proposal, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Brooklyn.
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