M. Benjamin Thorne

Still Life of a Still Life

The fruited bowl adorns the table
just so, slanted by a sunbeam:
a frozen avalanche of grapes,
‌        shiny faces
turned towards the unseen window;
fulsome apples tantalize in half-light;
over them all loom daisies ensconced
in glass vase, nodding their approval.
A pixelated masterpiece painted
in 1s and 0s, convincing verisimilitude of
‌        a simulacrum
of boredom: honestly, who the hell cares
about the secret lives of orchids or figs?
Still-life galleries are the flyover states
of art museums, disinteresting fields
separating the coasts of medieval passions
and modern anxieties, everybody knows.
Does any docent doze more than there?

So how does my rendition differ
from a Monet or Renoir? Digital art
can look as adeptly realized to even
savvy eyes. Are these fruits not
just as dappled and paralyzed? But
look closely and its matte sameness
appears flat as the screen. Approach
a canvas by Cézanne and you can see
the ridges of paint, each risen like mountains
from collision of brush to cloth; fine stray lines
‌        of uncertainty
or tremor, move in even further, and you
might with microscope view particles of
the man himself, now embedded in dry oil,
the briefest kiss of his genetics and genius,
and the dust of Aix-en-Provence affixed
within a green tree that grows in the mind
like a seed long after being seen, still verdant,
‌        still life.

A Pushcart Prize nominee, M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Feral, Gyroscope Review, Red Eft Review, San Antonio Review, Thimble Lit Mag, and Last Syllable Lit. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.