TROMPE L'OEIL

by David Thoreen

Pere Borrell del Caso’s most famous work, "Escaping Criticism" (1874), uses trompe l'oeil to blur the boundary between real and fictitious space. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons via BBC).

after "Escaping Criticism"

Historians say it began in Pompeii,
with murals artfully deceiving the eye
into believing that beyond a wall lay
another room, or a garden and blue sky.

Dutch painters polished the ploy: a display
of totems owned by the powerful; often, a sly
reminder of death—the candle burned partway...
or there, at rest on the painted frame, a fly.

Pere Borrell del Caso’s barefoot boy will not stay
in his painting. Forget this gilt frame. Escape or die
trying. Enough posing. Why can’t he just play golf
or fillet a minion, parlay Kellyanne with her con of the day,
send Pence off to pray, pay somebody something to make it all go away?
Your pronunciation is fine:  T***p lie, T***p lie, T***p lie.


Editor's Note: 


David Thoreen teaches literature and writing at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts.  His poems have appeared in Natural Bridge, Slate, Seneca Review, New Letters, TheNewVerse.News, and elsewhere.

ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE

by Mark Spicknall

The carny artist makes black scribbles,
laughing, a good game, a show.
He can do us in a minute,
the fastest ever, he says,
his lines a rusty sideshow ride
careening through funnel cake fog.
We are there somewhere,
points on a line we’ve fallen into,
rising, screaming, then falling
into a bell-shaped dead silence.

     He laughs and laughs.

Author’s note:  On the feeling that too often creeps in watching the daily White House coronavirus briefings.


Mark Spicknall is a manufacturing and business consultant, a sailor settled in the mountains, who writes to try to make sense of the tides, the climbs, storms and the stars.