Found

Ink wash paintings by 17th century Chinese artist Lan Ying.

In other news, I did a drug test for my job today.

The Urine Specimen By TED KOOSER In the clinic, a sun-bleached shell of stone on the shore of the city, you enter the last small chamber, a little closet chastened with pearl, cool, white and glistening, and over the chilly well of the toilet you trickle your precious sum in a cup. It’s as simple as that. But the heat of this gold your body’s melted and poured out into a form begins to enthrall you, warming your hands with your flesh’s fevers in a terrible way. It’s like holding an organ – spleen or fatty pancreas, a lobe from your foamy brain still steaming with worry. You know that just outside a nurse is waiting to cool it into a gel and slice it into a microscopic slide for the doctor, who in it will read your future, wringing his hands. You lift the chalice and toast the long life of your friend there in the mirror, who wanly smiles, but does not drink to you.

Portraits by Ecuadorian painter Oswaldo Guayasamin. Kind of spooky don't you think?

Botanical paintings by Ukrainian folk artist Kateryna Bilokur.

Paintings by Catalan artist Joan Miro.

The Man-Moth By ELIZABETH BISHOP Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.” Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon. He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties, feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold, of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers. But when the Man-Moth pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface, the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings. He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky, proving the sky quite useless for protection. He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb. Up the façades, his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage to push his small head through that round clean opening and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light. (Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.) But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt. Then he returns to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits, he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly. The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed, without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort. He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards. Each night he must be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams. Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window, for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison, runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers. If you catch him, hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil, an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips. Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over, cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

Driftwood sculptures by Japanese artist Nagato Iwasaki.