Eric Benick

Fox Hunt

We are nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that come into God’s head

-Franz Kafka via Max Brod via Walter Benjamin via Harry Zohn (translation)

And there are flowers 
but they are not our flowers 
our flowers are the ones that kill us 

foxes are flowers 
the moon is a flower 

men women prisons mirrors storms fear water love 
all flowers 

when running through a field of godknowshowmany flowers 
I am holding my breath
and an axe 

I stand on my million heads 
amid self-populating deaths 
yellowed axe at rest 
listening for hoofbeats in the wind

I’ve heard mention of a god 
who burns the stars into our back
that we should know him 
through our scars 

whose tears grow flowers 
who is himself a dead flower 
pressed between two sheets of parchment 

My favorite souvenir is actually my late grandfather's souvenir. It is a cornicello he was given while living in Napoli for good luck. After he passed, my grandmother passed this souvenir on to me (which, I guess, turns it into an heirloom). I have held it very close to me for the past ten years. I'm not superstitious but I am sentimental. 

Eric Tyler Benick lives and works in Portland, OR. He likes cats, broccoli, the poems of John Berryman, the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and running long distances. His work has appeared in KeepThis  BagAway  From  Children  and  Alchemy.  His chapbook, Fox Hunts, is forthcoming for June of this year