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  • The Sick Bacchus
  • Miguel Murphy (bio)

I’ll never have peace, not as long as I keep lookinginto the armor of these cold black grapes, their littleillicit emptiness, as if my whole existencewere sealed into its casket. In 1592, between the Piazzadel Popolo and Campo de’ Fiore, was Caravaggiotwenty-one, a vagabond, and an apprentice, already

an outlaw. He offered himself, the vine dying,the faces of prostitutes shaded yellow, purple, and green,to winter midnights in the Ortaccio di Ripetta.The glamour of any night street is its desolate sheen. Supplevacancy. It’s all there, gripping the corner of the table

in his self-portrait. Hoofmarks. Black wine. Urgency.To have as your companion your wound,the bruise of moonlight across your dagger. To knowyou are nothing. What you touch will wither. To be,after that magnificent horse of history has kicked you,and not for the last time, in hiding. Pimp. Painter. Common

thief, the light falls like an injustice, like jaundice.To be twenty-one again, all defiance and vulgar need! In 1985,I was ten years old. The graves of my tribe—I walked past them. Smiling, cherubic as a condemnation.Prepubescent, and bored. One of Caravaggio’s boys.

Now, nearly forty, I look at this young portrait and seethe cochineal on the infected nopal cactus the summerI was diagnosed. His whitish lips. The angry griefof that half-grimace reflected by his shoulder, protectiveand bare. In his sour pallor, in his skin the color of light grapesand the dying leaf in his hair is the accusation [End Page 131]

of shadow and carapace: Like. Touched. Fruit. I. Gleam.And these wild, ripe grapes, filledwith contempt. My eyes reflect them. It is still yearsbefore I’ll know what to do with the useless world. It is still1610. Caravaggio is two months shyof thirty-nine, visiting the sex clubs of the Cerriglio.Penniless and alone, a fugitive—

His last and only friend, a dog named Crow. [End Page 132]

Miguel Murphy

Miguel Murphy is the author of Detainee (Barrow Street, 2016) and A Book Called Rats (Lynx House, 2005). He lives in Los Angeles where he teaches at Santa Monica College.

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