Eric Tyler Benick

fox hunt

it is the opulent season jazz season season of the fatuous witch a fungal season season of bovine publishing rutabaga season and of resilient chicory season at the river’s helm spying the fish it is the fox’s den sunk by refuse season season of the busted sock and the crowded train a vestigial season chubby soporific season season listen season look i’m guarding the last of the hazelnuts season the crop yields will murder us season be kind in your masks of ochre season i’m flat on my back again naked as a final plum season what do we owe you central park has shed feathers bodies in the bethesda fountain all of them virgins once season do you care season of moral anger season of the spurious godhead season of seasons before and fewer to come should we fuck exhaustively ourselves from cognition season of the saccharine corpse of the floating lights of the townhouse apparition season i’m bloated because i’m hungry season i shaved my head season the rain buried evidence season look how charming you are with your elbows on the hudson season your suicidal grey of madison avenue season of the subterranean barstool legs wearied by a thirst as heavy as horses season we are the seasons’ painters you can tell because we broke our hands punching the nearest mirror season it’s dumb season we are fools you and us season of altitude of addiction of espionage season you are so beautiful i put on my cleanest pants and grab coffee and ride the a to fort tryon to be with you season i look over the edge into the amorous waters season of veneration season of impetuous gratitude the sentimental season season i am ambivalent beneath you season i oscillate between grace and horror season i long for your thick vegetable blanket to sleep surreptitious as a fat squirrel season each time i kiss my wife i fear it’s the last season i am the vulpine proletariat season we will strike until you protect us season the seasons are not inviolable from class war season the rich abandoned you and exploited you and sold you into labor season your subjectivity has become a measure of profit season look at the tears on your morning grass season pull up your anchor and move along and take us with you

semiotics of fox

fox as in vulpes vulpes
as in canonically feral
fox as both subject and object
transitive and intransitive
first second third person animal vegetable omniscient ignorant
fox as base function as proverbial
only insofar as provides meaning
fox as perennial unmasking of bandit
of specter of tycoon of ecology
fox as in fact check
as in fox as mendacity
as in tenderly fox is no one’s friend
fox as beatific beneath the hunt
fox as a circle as in recursive as in conduit
fox as red snow and a corpse’s sunken shadow
fox as a semantic gesture the breath of which freezes
against the stone floor of a promenade
fox as in hook turns fish
turns merperson turns someone’s relative
suffocating on a hot deck of licentious beards and wood shavings
fox as in naked is the atrocity
and naked is the land
and naked are those who survive and suffer
or are cut short of survival
it doesn’t matter
because only language and despots wear clothes to fox
fox as exploited archetype
fox is as much fugue on xylophone
as it is fuck off xenophobes
fox as in fox is merely fox and cannot be expected to carry the meaning of its foxness
fox as explicit as in organic as in impervious
fox is not a system has no system and thus is vermin
is the precise moment the line meets its end on the page

Eric Tyler Benick is the author of the chapbooks I Don't Know What an Oboe Can Do (No Rest Press, 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 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.