Resa Blatman, Coitus, 2005
Oil on wood
46 x 66"
In the forest of ill intentions:
a carpet of bull nettle, barbs
and stinging spores. A single
doe trespasses through the pines.
Here is the wilderness of null:
serpent bed, red mud, fungi
white as the dead. I have walked
here and not walked here. How
many times will I set the needle
on the back of a floating locust leaf,
divining for true North? Where
were my footsteps? What does
survival mean? Unlike
the cicada, I cannot shed entirely
the shapes I have assumed. If evil
enshrines the self above all else,
then nature is its altar: doesn’t that
sound true enough? I see only
the small hill made by the corpse
of a great black boar, moths
opening and closing their bodies
like dire little envelopes.