The Midnight Paintings of Dr. Seuss
Inspired by the Secret Art and Archive of Dr. Seuss
We’re not in Whoville anymore.
For the mysterious place we’re bound for,
you have to go on beyond zebra, past the last Truffula grove,
to where Once-lers and pale green pants are rumored to rove.
Here, Dr. Seuss doodled and carved and glued horn to wood,
creating an imaginary taxidermy menagerie as only he could:
mounted trophies of creatures with names like tufted gustard and the gimlet fish,
and paintings of beasts unmistakably his,
the elephants, the birds, the odd furry bipeds,
abstracts and eerie nightscapes and surly tabbies being ejected;
not a straight line to be found, all curves and odd angles,
in Technicolor shades that’ll make your eyes jangle.
The good doctor worked in a tower so he could stomp and shout
and try the sounds of his distinctive syntax out.
These worlds of which he was both creator and dweller--
but then, we already knew Ted was a singular feller.
He didn’t want his secret art released until after he died,
a last gift for the children whose imaginations he guided,
a window into that childhood garden that looks so different now--
a place we’d go back to, if we only knew how.
The Jumping-Off Place
inspired by The Cosmic Portal by Tyler Schrader
a performing arts event with the air of a circus
we went for the acts for that old school magic
the jugglers the acrobats
we went for the fog machines and laser lights
we went for the food trucks selling tacos and snow cones and funnel cakes
we went for the children running along the thoroughfare waving their glo-sticks and plastic swords
wearing flower crowns and light-up ballcaps
we went for the night that was too late for summer and too early for autumn golden and balmy
the air full of flying and buzzing things
at the edge of the woods an art installation
an interactive piece called the Cosmic Portal
a mandorla-shaped widget with flashing colored lights
across from it is a tree stump
where you are supposed to stand and look
into the flashing lights
there is a line leading up to the tree stump
person after person gets up eager and comes down disappointed
then it's your turn
you in your glow-in-the-dark bracelets
your garlands of plastic beads
their light won't save you any more
than the starlight can save you
and the beads offer up no prayers
as you step onto the tree trunk and it starts to shake so it almost knocks you off
pulling energy up from the Earth itself
and as your body trembles the colors of the Cosmic Portal
shift and pulse and draw you in
until the sounds of the crowd around you fade
until all you can see are colors
and the last thing you remember
are the dying sounds of the year’s last cicadas
a mosquito fastening itself to your shoulder
before you too come down
you go home thinking of the colors the vibrations
the colors the vibrations
and you find that you too are a portal
something to be entered
that night you slip out of your house
you go back to the venue
the visitors center locked
the rest of the event grounds dark
the lot where the food trucks parked now empty
but the portal lights are on
waiting
you get up on the tree stump again
and again you hear the thrum the Earth’s heartbeat
and from somewhere beyond it comes
an answering rhythm ready to inhabit
That Time My Car Became a Swamp
I spent four summers watching my husband
sit in the palm of Death’s hand,
waiting for Him to make a fist.
Every morning, I got up and went to work
and left him to his suffering,
because in the midst of life,
we are in capitalism or something.
One year, the spring rains lingered.
Sump pumps kicked on.
Our basement was spared,
but neither of us thought to check
the little red compact hibernating in our driveway.
Neither of us was driving it at the time,
I because I was driving the more comfortable full-sized,
and he because he was going nowhere, and not fast.
If we had checked, we might have noticed
that the rubber seals around the back windows
had worn away, and rain was getting in.
We didn’t realize what had happened until one day,
around mid-summer, I stepped outside to find
a great blue heron roosting on its roof,
watching me with its sun-gold eyes.
The rear windows had all gone dark with
overlapping branches of tupelo and bald cypress.
I opened the door and was almost thrown backwards
as water gushed out, along with a scuttling,
screeching, honking explosion:
fogs of midges, mosquitoes and dragonflies,
wood ducks and marsh hawks,
salamanders and cottonmouths,
snapping turtles and cricket frogs.
I pushed past them and climbed inside.
Here, the air was even denser than
the steamy June morning outside the car,
denser and more pungent.
I waded through cattails and redvine,
swathes of cow itch and Virginia creeper.
I parted hanging curtains of purple passionflower
and beheld what had become of my seats--
the seats themselves had been reduced to mounds
beneath coverings of bog moss,
the floor boards pools of algae and brown water,
the roof a curved green tunnel,
the car’s utilitarian gray interior swallowed by vibrance.
But beneath the mounds, there were still seats.
So, I sat. And sat.
I don’t know how long I stayed in the backseat swamp,
lulled by this throne of moss, this perpetual gloam,
listening to its unstill stillness.
Then I crawled out the other side.
We did our best to shoo all the critters away.
The front seat was still dry,
so I was able to drive my little pocket bog to the dealership,
trailing pawpaws and swamp milkweed,
my rearview filled with swamp rabbits
and the scuds of retreating white-tail deer.
It took two professional cleanings to remove
all of the muck, and even then,
the interior of the car smelled forever after
like dampness and mildew.
Later, when I would drive it again,
I would sometimes find feathers, snakes skins shed whole,
mottled fragments of swamp sparrow eggs.
Little messages to remind me, By this vehicle,
we come and go.
Pompeii
Inspired by Experts in Pompeii Have Discovered a Female Sorcerer’s Mysterious Arsenal of Charms—See Them Here, artnet.com, August 13, 2019.
“[S]ome [were] lifting their hands to the gods; but the greater part convinced that there were now no gods at all, and that the final endless night of which we have heard had come upon the world.”
-Pliny
Excavations of Pompeii began in 1748.
Over 270 years later, we are still unearthing mysteries.
It is said that Pompeii is cursed. Even now, they say,
don’t take anything from the site, or you will regret it.
People who have stolen artifacts have mailed them back to Italy
with letters of apology.
On tours, you can see the body of a victim huddled inside a glass case.
In Herculaneum, it is believed that the heat from an ash cloud
turned one man’s brain and part of his spine into glass,
neurons and axons captured forever in black shards.
Back in Pompeii, bread was found,
81 loaves in a single oven, petrified like wood,
pull-apart wheat baked from a sourdough starter.
Its ancient recipe has been recreated, perfect for dipping in soup;
and, found in a house, a witch’s treasure trove,
their wooden chest long since disintegrated:
amulets, lucky charms, evil eye protection,
bone, bronze, amber, amethyst,
scarabs, satyrs, the head of Dionysus,
tiny skulls, phalluses, little bells blue with patina.
You could see that exact inventory today in a flea market stand.
Two thousand years is not enough distance to display a body.
We still eat bread and soup. We still seek vengeance.
We still fill our chests and brains with shiny hope.
We wonder, Will my bones and vitrified organs one day be on display?
When the ashes start to fall, what will we be doing?
Resurrection
Drying lakes and melting ice reveal man
for what he is: in the Alps, a 1,700-year-old
Roman sandal was found,
a World War I shelter containing food,
clothing, and other artifacts, the bodies
of a Swiss couple missing since 1942,
among other poor souls lost in the shadow
of the Matterhorn. In Lake Mead, the remains
of homicide victims have been found,
of people who drowned as far back as 1974.
Mt. Everest climbers, World War II shipwrecks,
plane crash debris-- so many bones scattered
across history, so much for forensics teams
and archaeologists to puzzle over as
the temperatures continue to rise,
leaving the eschatologists to ask whether
this is what they meant when they said that
the dead would be raised up in the end times.
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