Bart Wilcox
The Golden Age No. 1: The Hollowed Thing
2024, Oil on canvas, 40″ x 30″

What is this hollowed-out animal that makes a noise when you squeeze it?
Who filled it with smoke and gave it a place at the table?
Let it stay, gave it its own room? It could be, we supposed, an ancestor.
And if not a superbeing, it is surely the intended model.
When it disappears into the fog, why do we find ourselves
standing on the mooring, holding the line for its return when we’d rather
put the rope around its neck? (In weaker moments, we’ve done worse.)
We tie it up, embrace it, never asking where it’s been or what it’s done.
We’re unable to remember if someone left it or we picked it up somewhere. Not paying attention. Somehow it got into the cart and unable
to return it, we cling to it, rather than take it back and get on our knees
and beg, no mercy to throw ourselves, to create mercy as we would
weave a prayer rug. All for this sideshow mermaid we’ve yet to name.
And while we’re at it, ah, we’ve lost track again, graven humanity escaping. Christ! What’s it doing now? Is this on our behalf? We’ll pay for
anything it breaks. But, without question, it is set loose and whatever terror it brings we will find a way to live with. It’s the one thing we know about it.