Eric Benick
fox hunt
fox in human clothes
attempts a bank loan
to bury deeper
himself in hiding
but has no value
no assets and so is turned
away to fifth avenue
with all the other animals
in the incantatory traffic
the orders of movement
too complex a mathematics
fox doesn’t dare cross
the street by himself
he has seen his brothers
color the flat roads
skinned and eviscerated
the sun is low and paints
the glass like water
fox is stunned to find
his likeness everywhere
enormous coats on tiny women
like a roving abattoir
only fox can see the mother
holding her daughters
he can see their moment
of terror and their indelible joy
mother affixed and watching
their bodies catch and contain the air
he knows it is the only reason
their fur still holds
Eric Tyler Benick is the author of the chapbooks I Don’t Know What an Oboe Can Do (No Rest Press, Forthcoming 2020) and The George Oppen Memorial BBQ (The Operating System, 2019) as well as co-founder and editor at Ursus Americanus Press, a publisher of chapbooks. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Washington Square Review, Vassar Review, Entropy, drDoctor, No, Dear, Reality Beach, Funny Looking Dog Quarterly, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn.