A man and a boy
are in bed together in a tiny
one-room trailer
filled carelessly with their possessions.
The room slants down to the left,
the trailer resting perhaps
on its towbar, which we cannot see.
The angled perspective
gives an air of tension to the scene, a sense of confusion and disorder,
reinforced by the position
of the occupants, both of whom are naked.
The man is lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. The boy,
asleep, lies on his side, an arm thrown over
the man's chest. The man's penis is erect. A cat
crouches on a table in the corner, holding
a mouse under its paw. Through a little window, we can glimpse
the tents and wagons
and impedimenta of a cheap circus.
On the horizon the sun emerges in a horizontal burst
of red light. The oils have begun
to peel away in the lower right corner of the painting,
revealing an earlier work beneath,
the prow of a distant brigantine tossed about in a storm, a glimpse
of the foaming waves, a dark figure wallowing
in the trough--man or serpent, who can say?--until the sea
has reclaimed it all.


�2005 by James Lineberger
posted 11/11/05