It's Still Life

Genre: A Still Life with Dead Game, Fruits and Vegetables in a Market by Frans Snyders c. 1614

This is the Thursday market.
It’s a voice sticky, thick and red.
A still life of lifeless animals,
dead birds and gluey fruit.
Flies rise and settle on skewered
corpses of feathered flesh.

And here is a man of butchery,
so very manly in lengths of beard,
wears a death song coloured coat.
And his stomach is full with fat.
He lifts his hat, a laugh, a wave,
a breath of burped-up meat.

And here’s a boy of dirt and sleep,
dressed in the colour of the street.
His hand slips in that very manly
pocket, captive to its musty smell.
He feels a warmth of flesh, and
in his hand cold coins have fell.

Here on the butcher’s table, a maze
of life lies still, a deer hung long
by leg, a swan of porcelain-white.
A boar. A pheasant. Hen and molluscs.
And sat below the table in darkness
smuggled in by night, two lantern-

yellow eyes spy two cocks at fight.
Here’s a cat who owns the street, is
a stray bullet stripe of speed. This cat
with agile feet and teeth is drawing
hieroglyphs. Here’s a cat that waits
for two fighting cocks to eat.

Written for Miz Quickly’s Day 18 “Part 3” from the Cento poem, create something new, and PA’s write a “Thursday poem”. © Misky 2021. Image is from WikiArt A Still Life with Dead Game, Fruits and Vegetables in a Market by Frans Snyders c. 1614