Horace Pippin, Holy Mountain IV by Michael Begnal

Horace Pippin, Holy Mountain IV (unfinished, 1946)

 

The mountain in two shades

of grey, looming, its rim cracked

volcanitectonically against

a sky of de-emphasized

light-blue—

at its foot,

a strip of desert

tan and then the

foreground stratum:

the arid ground of

denuded green

and the ghosts of three animals—

lion  /  mountain lion  /  wolf  /

hollow revenant outlines,

holograms

the tree black, bare,

its perspective

spectrically outsized,

dangles no noose,

only prophecy

Michael Begnal is the author of Future Blues (Salmon Poetry, 2012) and Ancestor Worship (Salmon Poetry, 2007), as well as the chapbook The Muddy Banks (Ghost City Press, 2016). His work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Notre Dame Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Empty Mirror, Scoundrel Time, and Thinking Continental: Writing the Planet One Place at a Time (University of Nebraska Press, 2017). He can be found online at www.mikebegnal.blogspot.com and on Twitter @Michael_Begnal.