(after Hopper)
In the tomblike
silence of museums,
they tear themselves
from canvases
reeking of oil
and bleed into the realm
of rat, shadow.
In their eyewater,
the planets
constellate and wobble,
grinding on their axes
to a halt.
The mares of night
whinny, floundering
in the muck
of their blood.
They wear the moon
in their hair,
the moon which ruffles
glowing feathers
and squats closer,
incubating the hot,
fertile eggs
of their skulls.
Larry D. Thomas, the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Winner of the 2023 Spur Award for poetry (Western Writers of America), he has published twenty-three print collections of poems which include As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems (Texas A&M University Press, 2015). He resides in the Chihuahuan Desert of southwestern New Mexico.
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