Study of a Dog
(after Francis Bacon)
Snarl.
Legs braced, ready to lunge, ready
to compass that broad expanse.
He has me though, has me here,
a model, a statue in crumbled stone,
and to move is a baleful of sin,
fixed, centered, the target,
as though an eye on a bloody bull,
green green, thick-tied,
invisibly chained,
unnatural as a turnip in a cage,
just there; there to be run over,
like that deer as it tries to cross,
squashed, unceremoniously left
like garbage beside the road,
and by those barely discernible cars.
Perhaps, as in Kafka’s dream,
I am being slowly turned, processed,
into some giant insect on a wall,
feared, but too fearful myself to move,
while he
who wields a brush, grossly
contours my fate.