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Here's the portrait, Wild Boy with Exquisite Neck,
as I like to call it, in my Wonder-
Cabinet where I keep days, each a nacre-backed
bug
from a jungle, some creature
with delicate, enormous wings
or
extinct fungi gone before
naming. My dodos, my days before
dying: a feral child, long-neck,
knee callused, shoulder blades a wing's
stumps. This boy sat long enough to wonder
at stillness, long enough to be painted-- a creature
rendered
noble as he watched a bug
dash itself against meager light, the bug
unaware of the glass pane, its last moments before
the eye of the boy, a creature
himself, fidgeting, wanting to scratch his neck,
now collared. He will wonder
at
the buzz, that shine of wings
and glass. Not unlike this new specimen's wings:
blue and black on white ground. This bug
is almost my invention-- since acquiring it I wonder
how it found its way before
finding me, displayed level with the boy's beautiful
neck,
aside three eggs from the fish-bird creature
and the caul of the Cyclops, the last creature
of its kind. Back to my One Without Wings,
another name for him: posing, his bitten neck
itching, proud. The dirty nails, the bug-
bitten welts inflamed-- nothing is lost to the
artist before
he's done. The last in my chain of
roses leading to wonder,
this portrait, nothing lost but his name. I wonder
if he had one, if saying it makes a creature
more or less, the same as before,
as when I was nameless, amid the wing-
flutter of heart, in mother,
small as the bug
on
the sill the boy watches, dirty fingers on neck,
scratching. It's done and he'll stand, flex wing-stumps,
wonder
what'll become of his twin, flat creature-- the bug
dying before itself
in the glass-- that strange collared neck.
