Portrait

Funerals happen.
You walk past one
and call it a Tuesday

afternoon; the sun
comes down. This
is how it happens.

 A crowd gathers like black water, the mind forgets the mind, memories come knocking in the hallway, a pair of hands perfect the moon: Portrait is the darkly lucid debut poetry collection by Jackson McCarthy. Desire, time, vision, beauty, and solitude count among this collection’s obsessions — obsessions rendered with such close-up intensity that even Death seems to reverse or suspend its trajectory. Interrupting this lyrical streak, we hear from a narrator whose tragicomic dedication to art over life results in fraught, surreal misunderstandings of the world around him. Portrait, too, is invested in its own artfulness. Playing with layers of voice and identity, these poems appear to paint portraits of their subjects — but do so blending observation with invention, memory with deep fantasy.