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.