fox hunt
blitzed again by human architectures i’ve never had a chance
but to persimmon pink into the city sewers
in the valleys of camperdown elm some call it respite what i do
with my hands in all my shivering urgency
a rabbit stops me in my tracks and riddles me useless
his soft escape a nimble and needful praxis
the young boys slap their big bellies in the water
the sound rustles the grass as a viper striking
the runner in park slope is little more than his flopping penis
which he has advertised discerningly at the front of his body
i’ve been lucky to see appalachia in autumn where the good dirt
directs the vast vegetable singers
i am not the wiser cat who can make meaning from the mountains
if i speak at all it is as a defense
wouldn’t it be so quaint a practical solution for this noise
how we could all lie down without dying to do so
i pause somewhere between rest and resolution
a woman cries fox and i scatter beneath the pale fear of the village
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 a founding editor at Ursus Americanus Press, a chapbook publisher. His work has appeared in Bat City Review, Armstrong Literary, Washington Square Review, 3 A.M. Magazine, Birdcoat Quarterly, Mount Island, Ghost Proposal, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.