Its eyes blazed
in the cellphone
camera’s light
like Gort’s
cyclopic laser,
but a matched pair,
demonic on screen.
I caught it
slinking down the yard,
careful not to
rustle leaves.
It startled me first.
When I stood,
raised the lens &
pressed the app,
the fox raced back
the way it came,
then turned,
returned,
circled a sapling
as if chasing
its tail, playful,
a dancer
in the spotlight
I extended.
I know brightness
terrified it
like a hound
tracking its moves
for the rifleman
behind. Yet,
it lingered
so I could get it
on film—I
want to say film,
but what is film
in a digital world?
Anathema
to language
as the fox
to this hillside
in the city.
It finally fled
one way
or the other,
its eyes burning
in binary code
on my iPhone
that never forgets
any myth it makes.
is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.
