War of the Foxes. Richard Siken

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      Contents

        Title Page

        Note to Reader

       Contents

      1  The Way the Light Reflects

      2  Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors

      3  Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede

      4  Birds Hover the Trampled Field

      5  Detail of the Hayfield

      6  The Language of the Birds

      7  Still Life with Skulls and Bacon

      8  Landscape with Several Small Fires

      9  Detail of the Fire

      10  War of the Foxes

      11  Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light

      12  Three Proofs

      13  Ghost, Zero, Suitcase, and the Moon

      14  Logic

      15  Lovesong of the Square Root of Negative One

      16  The Field of Rooms and Halls

      17  The Mystery of the Pears

      18  Dots Everywhere

      19  The Museum

      20  The Stag and the Quiver

      21  Detail of the Woods

      22  Landscape with Black Coats in Snow

      23  Self-Portrait against Red Wallpaper

      24  Glue

      25  Turpentine

      26  The Story of the Moon

      27  The Worm King’s Lullaby

      28  The Painting That Includes All Painting

        About the Author

        Books by Richard Siken

        Acknowledgments

        Copyright

        Special Thanks

THE WAY THE LIGHT REFLECTS

      The paint doesn’t move the way the light reflects,

      so what’s there to be faithful to? I am faithful

      to you, darling. I say it to the paint. The bird floats

      in the unfinished sky with nothing to hold it.

      The man stands, the day shines. His insides and

      his outsides kept apart with an imaginary line—

      thick and rude and imaginary because there is

      no separation, fallacy of the local body, paint

      on paint. I have my body and you have yours.

      Believe it if you can. Negative space is silly.

      When you bang on the wall you have to remember

      you’re on both sides of it already but go ahead,

      yell at yourself. Some people don’t understand

      anything. They see the man but not the light,

      they see the field but not the varnish. There is no

      light in the paint, so how can you argue with them?

      They are probably right anyway. I paint in his face

      and I paint it out again. There is a question

      I am afraid to ask: to supply the world with what?

LANDSCAPE WITH A BLUR OF CONQUERORS

      To have a thought, there must be an object—

      the field is empty, sloshed with gold, a hayfield thick

      with sunshine. There must be an object so land

      a man there, solid on his feet, on solid ground, in

      a field fully flooded, enough light to see him clearly,

      the light on his skin and bouncing off his skin.

      He’s easy to desire since there’s not much to him,

      vague and smeary in his ochers, in his umbers,

      burning in the open field. Forget about his insides,

      his plumbing and his furnaces, put a thing in his hand

      and be done with it. No one wants to know what’s

      in his head. It should be enough. To make something

      beautiful should be enough. It isn’t. It should be.

      The smear of his head—I paint it out, I paint it in

      again. I ask it what it wants. I want to be a cornerstone,

      says the head. Let’s kill something. Land a man in a

      landscape and he’ll try to conquer it. Make him

      handsome and you’re a fascist, make him ugly and

      you’re saying nothing new. The conqueror