after Francis Bacon’s painting of the same name, 1961

The father arrives in a room & sees the young man sitting
on the ground with his back against the wall. The room is empty.
There is no door. It’s as if the father arrives out of the air,
or rather, out of the darkness which also sits quietly in the corners.

The father wears a skin bastardized by the sun, tanned beyond
comfort. His face is mass. Is contorted & blended, his eyes,
nose, ears, mouth are entirely one thing, almost specked by
a familiarity the young man wants to forget, but he looks up.

Chain-linked muscles, joints & nerves rumble, imagine themselves
to be pivotal, imagine themselves to be useful for another thing,
to be used without reward. There’s a toll for every waking moment
inside each blood current, the waves lap against all four walls,

& the currency is unknown. Nothing is known to those who crave
the humiliating realization of how perfectly comfortable it feels
to live within a body of rage. A face contorted. A face melted by fire.
A face imagined in a mirror of flame. Or perhaps, only a painting.

The young man does not get up, but his eyes do. They catapult
into the ceiling, stones thrown & clanking down from the paint
chipped interior—inside the father is a horrible blankness. There is
a mechanicalness about him. Bionic even. Rotating gears move legs,

move arms, wiggle ears, bring a smile to the upper part of his head.
The young man is quiet. His entire body longs to persist despite
the reality of his flesh. His sore soul. His body is tattooed with
voices, marked & scarred by quiet revolt. He doesn’t move.

This is a game, you might think to yourself. The young man
& the father being controlled by some force. But it’s not.
It’s not a story, not folklore or myth. They’re just there
because that’s enough. The father opens. Makes room

in the empty space as if to say come on in, I won’t bite.
The young man knows this is a lie. He sees the shadows
clearly like water. The father reaches down & touches
the young man, & the young man hurts to feel it.

Nick Soluri is a writer from New York. His poetry has appeared in Hobart, Misfit Magazine, Albany Poets, Ghost City Review, and in the forthcoming anthology Without a Doubt: Poems Illuminating Faith (NYQ Books, 2021). He's an MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College, and tweets @nerkcelery