Fog Warning, by Winlsow Homer.
This painting has haunted me since childhood, when i saw it in a book. I've got a pasteboard, postersize copy of it that i found leaning against a pile of black garbage bags in an alley uptown. The stark, straight-fowardness of its style portrays the horror of the situation in such a matter-of-fact manner that there is something strangely comforting in its brutality: the fisherman killed the fish and now, mere minutes later (for one can almost see that the fish's tail is still flapping), the fog and sea are going to kill the fisherman.
Simple baby math without remainders.
But there is more...
I get high and stare deep into the gray apparition of the fog, until i can make out the lavender beak and talons hiding underneath...
(i can see it! i can see it!)
it's like one of those sunday school drawings where u have to find jesus's face...
...once spotted it can't be unseen.
(the Secret Starling of the Slipstream...the Messenger of Death...)
Meanwhile outside my window the trees have exploded with cones of white spring flowers
they glow like a stadium at night
as little black birds leap between the branches
raining petals down upon the sunken shoulders of the smackhead who's trying to sell a broken amp.
im a biter, not a writer...
a novel in 491 parts.
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