‘Outward Signs of Inner Mysteries’ by Eric Gudas
2026
THE BARE-CHESTED MAN emanates light. Even the gray-tipped stubble on his chin and sunken cheeks sparks into the dusk. Behind him, a gloomy sky bears down; over his right shoulder, three flags ripple atop a carnival tent, where the letters “E E,” half an “I,” and the smaller “r e” hint at “eerie.” His lined face, the cigarette-smoking skull inked on his bald scalp, the scythe-wielding figure bulging on his right cheek: all embody a memento mori. But he stands, adamant, in a power pose before the camera—the ritual stance of his profession—to display his muscled torso and upper arms that swarm with tattoos. Stars rise from a bird whose outspread wings echo the V of his plunging collarbones, while the dark patch of hair that bristles from his chest and narrows to a line forms another downward-plunging shape. A snake’s head, with rounded eye, coils around his rib cage, its length disappearing into the murk below him. But I return to his eyes, fixed on mine, their irises ablaze, each dark pupil dotted with a pinprick of light. Those eyes—below the deep fissure that parts his eyebrows, set in wrinkles inked by time—burn so hard that they almost sear a hole in the photographic paper.