SELFIE WITH SICK BACCHUS

You climb a tree to eat the day’s fruit
until the boughs crap out
 

              because your body must test the air
              to be art. Braid legs with branches

until the sun dulls. I am no docent
but so much depends upon

           proper diffusion of light. It’s not
           the moon, though it pursues you. It’s how

faces in paintings are lit like dead
relatives in dreams, their eyes
 

            pairs of dark gems. Caravaggio
            painted over several of his apostles

before giving Bacchus those sick eyes,
that crown of vines. We like this

             kind of art, but to buy it would cost us
             everything. Like listening to the story

of our own afterlife: once the stars
pull out and frost hits the field.

            Honey crystalizes in the jar.
            We vie for a view of something real—

oleander or our old selves—
but both contain poison.