behindtheax

childhood memory

While visiting my hometown in New Brunswick this summer my daughters went for a walk one afternoon by themselves and stopped in at the musuem. Compared to the ROM, which my girls are use to, they weren't overly impressed. But when I was a kid I thought it was the creepiest, oddest place in town. I loved it.

by art of taxidermy
teeth and lips snarl set
and glass eyes gleam
the source of light -
from open doors -
and tiny twisters of sun spun dust
line this threshold
on Wellington St.

this museum of mustard paint
and black cracked asphalt
ten steps west from the town’s
pool
where chlorine hovers haze like
in between the constant whistles
till chlorine will always smell like whistles
whistles will always sound like chlorine
and today like all days of summer
the afternoon is in the deep end
trying to pick up pennies from the bottom.

And with hunger giving by pool water
We stand in pockmarks of asphalt and dandelion dander
Gazing into the dark museum
July on our shoulders – blistered and red.
And the old favourites, the dead things
Call us in
And we go (of course)
Down the aisle of barn wood
And chicken wire cupboards
where fox and owl and beaver
stare down from branch or log
silver slices of metal protrude from around
hardened paws and coats
exhausted by death
dank mixes in well with the stretched white rubber
Of wet bathing caps
that we clench in wrinkled palms together with towels
And in one thin line we tread
Watching eyes and teeth but
only the owl remembers life
or something similar for it holds it
in its great false eyes – daring us to say it
doesn’t
And still we move towards the back
past the single albatross wing pinned to a board
and other oddities and history
united arbitrarily on shelves
where world war two metals and old ledgers
lay next to the fawn in formaldehyde
the fetus twisted in on her self
with undersized black hoofs hiding
closed eyes
suspended
Oracle like and aloof

And still we move towards the back
and dusty bell jars in a line
under the best - the
chicken with four legs
- the kitten with two heads
the length of their true lives we argue
And finally

-above – old and leathery -
at the very back wall
- the belly of a whale.
Hanging in the open rafters
looking like it may split and empty
the contents of a sea
or Jonah
onto us.

It is then the light of open doors
dissolves all restraint
to stay longer
and in a rush of flip-flop
we leave
praying that the doors won’t shut us in.
and that dead things stay dead

posted by mary j. @ 11:53 AM