Field Trip to the American Museum of Natural History, and: Pinky Ring
Rent from DeepDyve- Field Trip to the American Museum of Natural History, and: Pinky Ring
Field Trip to the American Museum of Natural History
We got to touch a meteorite that'd burnedacross a trillion miles of space to puncha hole through the fender of a '79 Malibuparked on a side street in Peekskill, NY,stared hard at the 536 caratsof blue star sapphire Murph the Surfcat burgled and hid for three yearsin a rented locker in a Miami bus station,posed next to a 1000 pound hunk of stibnitewith hundreds of metallic crystal swordsspouting from its rocky base,passed under the gargantuan war canoeof the Northwest Coastal peopleand by the masks that inspired Sendak,but nothing matched the excitementin the 81st Street station when a mousecrawled out from under the third rail,scrambled across the gravel, gnawedat the remains of what we'djust learnedis a descendent of the T-rex,and finished off the scrap of chicken nuggetbefore disappearing into a black holeseconds before the C trainscreamed into the station. [End Page 53]
Pinky Ring
Hold it under a good lightand you can countthe number of blowshe struck to shape itto her finger,hear the flat-faced hammersof the jump-suited felonsenlisted in the warden'sprogram of reformechoing off the bench vises,see my uncle slouchedover the raw metalhe pounded into a ringfor my mother's pinky,reaming and buffingthe brass, the polished chipof pink stonecrammed between the prongsof the setting,hear the hiss of the bitas he cut her name—the sister who still believed—into the shank. [End Page 54]
John Bargowski has received a NEA Literature Fellowship, a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Distinguished Artist Fellowship, the Rose Lefcowitz Prize from Poet Lore, and the Theodore Roethke Prize at Poetry Northwest. He has new work scheduled to appear in Ploughshares, The Sun, Natural Bridge, and Poetry Northwest.
