POUR, TEAR, CARVE

The Pheasant

By Amy Eisner

—after Chaïm Soutine’s painting of the same name, 1926-27

He goes straight to the deadness of the bird—
its mashed sleep-face, deflated neck, muddied

breast-plumage like a dislodged skeleton
inadequately cloaked by ethereal wings,

the force of his gaze pulling the inside 
out, lighting small flames in the umber woods,

freezing the pond around the fallen trees
whose knots and wisps of gray are pheasant toes,

some curled rigorously inward, some arced
in a skater’s path toward the black water

lit with the same red sunset that fires
the feathers around the pheasant’s slit eye

and the tongue within the slightly open beak.
He will not make the bird’s death beautiful 

and yet the landscape of the bird in death
can’t help but glow, and so beneath the sheet

a surface, now joint bone, now table, jolts
and loosens in a rage. This cannot stand.

Amy Eisner teaches creative writing at MICA, helping undergraduates develop as poets and MFA students integrate writing into their art practices. Her poems have appeared in journals including Fence, The Journal, Nimrod, Reed, Sugar House Review, and Washington Square, as well as a few galleries. She enjoys poetry games and cross-disciplinary collaboration.