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Light From a Bullet Hole: New and Selected PoemsPoem from Light From a Bullet Hole: Poems New and Selected
In the Children's Museum in Nashville In the Children's Museum in Nashville, rattlesnakes coil, protected by glass and by placards warning that if teased they might just dash their brains against apparent air. Negroes are advised that, if notified in advance, the Children's Museum in Nashville will take care of them on certain days. On an uncertain day, to regulate my sons by Mother Nature's whims, I make it quite clear that some skulls are less substantial than apparent air, as, evidently, one empty cage verifies. More durable are the heads of bison, eland (from Africa), and other exhibits: a purple parrot, who eventually condescends to demonstrate by winking that, far from dead, he of his own free will dreams over caged snakes in his own cage; blades from China's dynasties and Malayan tribes; some shrunken Jivaro noggins and a diminished Nashville; and, most awesome, a bird and a squirrel reborn at intervals from blacked-out flesh as white skeletons. On Sundays, children are allowed a look at electric stars. Seen every day is an Indian child-cured by chance, the signs say in a dry, airless place--still possessed of parchment skin, thought eyeless, and still dressed in ceremonial regalia that celebrates his remove to a better world. |