Death Wish

Poetry
Written By Julie L. Moore
 

~after Death’s-Head Moth on an Arum, Vincent van Gogh, oil, 33 x 24 cm, 1889


At the asylum, the moth sidles up to you,

a death wish since to paint it 

you’d have to kill it. A pity you say, since the beastie 

is so beautiful (1). Named after your still-

born brother—imagine it! Vincent so popular 

a family moniker that Johannes or Jan,

Hieronymus or Pieter just wouldn’t do for you—

you draw the wings, 

their four Peacock-feather eyes 

staring back at you, 

then translate the thorax’s stripes 

into a skull. Poor Yorick, perhaps, you lament 

as you give slaughter thought, 

then let it go. 

Later, using your sketch & memory 

limned by madness, 

your brush surprisingly begins: 

stroke by obsessive stroke, 

olive wings with their penetrating oculi

emerge, spreading over the spathe

where death’s head also deliberates, 

perched upon the bracts, those arrows 

aiming for the crimson berries above, 

reaching for relief. 

(1) Letter 592, May 25, 1889 as cited in Van Gogh’s Flowers by Judith Bumpus, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, 1995.

 
Julie L. Moore

A Best of the Net and eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Julie L. Moore is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon, which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's 2018 Book of the Year Award. Recently, her poetry has won Fare Forward’s 2024 poetry competition, and her creative nonfiction has won the Donald Murray Prize from Writing on the Edge. Her poetry has appeared in African American Review, Christian Century, Image, New Ohio Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Verse Daily, and many anthologies. You can learn more about her work at julielmoore.com.

http://www.julielmoore.com
Next

3 Bald Eagles