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Robert Gibb In the Museum |
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1. Fossils: Bodies in a bas-relief, as though laminated In limestone, the dragonflies slant On their familiar stalks— little sticks of incense, Wings paired and rounded like maple seeds. I return again to their stillness, to shelved Bodies held in gestures fragile and momentary As light, the ribbed fall of shadows on a wall. In the silence of museums I marvel At what takes shape in darkness left
undisturbed In the drift of stone, at pale slabs clean As plaster where the dust has been kept whole, Pressed in rifted plates. I come back To ridged anatomies, embossments of chalk, The slow, mineral flowerings of time into bone. 2. Diorama,
Polar World: Wyckoff Hall of Arctic Life In a white world whose shapes are cut From tusk and soapstone, the breath-laden
light, A kind of tableau vivant: the bone tip Of this harpoon aimed inches above the ice, Hasped with thong to the long shaft And the hunter behind it, hardly more still Than he'd be for real, frozen there, watching For signs of the ascending seal. Think of it sleeking its way into the
flame-blue cup Of the blow-hole only to be hauled Onto the floe—dead center of an eruption Breaking against the wheeling gulls And frenzy of the sled dogs— its risen body Opened up and rummaged like the sea's. 3. Dermestid Beetles,
Section of Invertebrate Zoology Insects, not angels, on the heads of pins, Bees frowzy in black honey, drowsing In their radiator combs, while here, sealed In paired terrariums, the resurrection Of the body has begun: bones stripped down In no time to the remnant tufts Of fur and jerky, unhinged sockets, ruddled cups. All in that massed, seething exfoliation. They'd devour the building if they could, Unhousing larvae from the marrow. They'd convey the world to light, little lords Of the underlife, trephining their disks of bone, Or tumble across each other as if spawned From matter, their teeth the teeth of cogs. |
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Arts & Letters is supported by |
Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture Campus Box 89 Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA
31061 Phone: (478) 445-1289 E-mail: al@gcsu.edu
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GC&SU is a member of |
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