Jay DeFeo’s close-up of the inside of an oyster shell

(Untitled, 1972, gelatin silver print)

Here quivered

a lonely

squirt

of muscle

extruded

like shapeless

paint

in a tube —

snow-driven

peaks and gasps

of Advil

punctuated

your

voluminous

interior

only to be pried

by will

alone from

between

darkening

crags;

your whole

world

pulls a

-part over a

forsaken

divot,

pearl-shaped.