The Extinction Museum

The Extinction Museum
Exhibit #357
Twenty-three wax cylinders of Tennyson
Reading "The Charge of the Light Brigade" c.1890

Poetry should cut
It should cleave
We crave the needle and the ax
When Edison sent his agents round to Tennyson's house
They transported the wax cylinders in leather and pasteboard cases
Chemical smelling, weeping black in the rain
It took four thousand dusk-colored beetles
To make the dye to stain the cowhide
And four trees to shape thе ribcage of the boxes
Thе trees were cut from forests in the north, on a different continent
Floated down rivers, barked against barges
Pulped by steel teeth into new matter
Tennyson's voice was two years removed from disappearance
His fingertips probed the wax as the agents tried to explain the mechanics of sound
His knuckles left a ridge in the recording that thumps like a man clapping
Tennyson demonstrated his understanding of sound seven times for them before they were satisfied
The beetles were collected at night by children paid half-wages
They were shy creatures in search of each other
Their skins just beginning to harden

The Extinction Museum
Exhibit #100
Embalmed whale rigged to the side of the ship
Where it floats in a lifelike manner

Inside the great beast
We clasped hands, shared the last cigarette
Its glow like our love traveling back and forth
Our breath made visible
We were bad luck, two wrongs, a scourge
When we fucked, locusts descended
When we went on a date, a plague of frogs appeared
Everything we touched sank
Until we ourselves were cast overboard
We begged to be sacrificed, but the world still burned
The beast's thunderous heart was louder than the storms outside
Jonah was off in the entrails somewhere, collecting lamp oil
Geppetto and Pinocchio took turns building a raft out of splinters of their flesh
I saw Adrienne Rich wearing an oxygen tank
You claimed D.H. Lawrence had set up a seismograph in the nether regions
When we kissed, the giant body rolled and water poured in
It was then we learned how to swim