Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GEO-BESTIARY: 23, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GEO-BESTIARY: 23, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: My soul grew weak and polluted during captivity, a zoo creature, frantic
Last Line: Then you're not.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Memory


My soul grew weak and polluted during captivity, a zoo creature, frantic
but most often senescent. One day in the Upper Peninsula I bought a
painting at a yard sale of the supposed interior of a clock. The tag said,
"Real Oil Painting Nineteen Bucks." People around me grinned, knowing
I wasn't a yard-sale pro. Never go to a supermarket when you're hungry,
my mother said, or a yard sale after a Cotes du Rhone. The painting
was quite dark as there's little sunlight within clocks but the owners had
wiped it with oil and there was a burnished glow to its burnt sienna. I
couldn't see into the cavern in the center but I didn't have my glasses with
me. Back at the cabin I was lucky enough to have the magnifying glass
that comes with the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, the true source of
agony. There were grinning mice sailing along on Eilshemius-type clouds
in a corner of the clock's metallic shell, and miniature assemblage print
that said, "flyways, byways, highways" in a lighter cavern, also "Je souffre
but so what," also "I am a buggered cherubim," an alarming statement.
On the central cavern walls there were the usual cogs and wheels,
straightforward, not melting Dali-esques. In the lower left-hand corner it
was signed "Felicia" with a feminine bottom from which emerged a candle,
lighting the artist's name. Here was a wedding present for a couple
you didn't really like. Children, even future artists, should never take the
backs off of discarded Big Bens. They'll never make sense of these glum,
interior stars with their ceaseless ticking, saying that first you're here and
then you're not.





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