Mr Potter’s Museum of Curiosities Kristy Bowen
Mr. Potter’s Museum of Curiosities
dancing girl press & studio, 2021 Based in Chicago, dancing girl press & studio creates a variety of open & limited edition books, art, and paper goods, as well as various ephemera-inspired gifts and accessories. The dancing girl press chapbook series was founded in 2004 to publish and promote the work of emerging women writers and artists. Spawned by the online zine wicked alice, the series seeks to publish work that bridges the gaps between schools and poetic techniques—work that's fresh, innovative, and exciting. The press has published numerous titles by emerging women poets in delectable open-run handmade editions. Our books are available via our website, at select independent bookstores, Chicago area literary events, and through author readings. www.dancinggirlpress.com editing & design: Kristy Bowen dancinggirlpress@yahoo.com
the drawing room In the museum, time freezes and tilts The squirrels, who have just begun a game of cards will forever be casting their chips and hedging their bets. Edging tipsy and stumbling through the parlor. No sooner have you rounded them up, no longer can you tell if they are living or dead. Their red tails stiff, but feathering in the breeze from the window. No sooner have you locked them in place then there are more of them populating your dreams, weilding swords and dinner knives. Their bones long gone, their eyes. What’s left inside them, a tuft of hide and bits of sawdust that arranges the party. That invites us in.
the rook and the lark When we came to mourn, we were hooked claw and bric-a-brac. Slack mouthed with feathers and mud we kept fashioning into coffins instead of nests. The best of our suits drying on a line somewhere, where the air was sweet with rotted teeth. Redolent with graves lined so tidy in rows. The bull has too many hooves to grind our bones. Kept stepping on our necks every time we tried to sing. The days so short this time of year, we couldn't keep anything in the ground, but we tried. Our tiny books, our pretty sheen. The song we swallowed, then let free, darkly, among the trees.
mechanical gymnasium No one could have foreseen the death that carried us. The breath that rose our chests and collapsed in the formaldehyde gloom. There were, after all, rooms full of bodies in jars. Eyes gone white. Bright light on the grounds that ate our shadows and dried out our skin. The tiny wooden sticks that assemble themselves into platforms and jungle gyms. Who knew the world so sodden with grief, and so beautiful? Each tiny hinge perfected, each blade of grass and painted tree exquisite. Even the tiny cottage we could not enter. If you listened carefully, we were laughing still as the glass fogged over. Gears in our bodies crudded with dust, with rusted cogs. And, one by one, we stopped moving, stiffening in all that sun.
of whimsy The women who line up in the foyer are the same women who finger the glass. Who linger in the drawing room contemplating the mangled kitten with its doubled body. Nothing tickles their fancy like fortune and rot. The children tucked at home in beds, each perfect toe and finger. Plump and in the porridge. After breakfast, they hurry off to school. And this poor thing, eight footed, unable to survive. Double-hearted and dying of fright. Did it scurry? Did it mew? Did its mother feel it tethered to the other--tiny nose, tiny spine. It’s failure to cleave one flesh from another. Turned over like an hourglass, its own reflection. The babies lost to fever, to fire. Drowned in the river. The one with the cloven heart that beat outside
the ribcage. Did it suffer in the cradle? The grave? The brave mother who wheeled the dead child down Euclid Street for days before we knew it was gone. Her startle when the baby didn’t move. Didn’t cough. Didn’t open its eyes and cry.
rabbit classroom Praise the God that broke our spines. That lined us up like children at our desks. Stuffed us full of sawdust and now nothing is clean or upright. Everything tight in our bodies, but nothing where it should be. The heart, cut clean out. Our tiny tongues. What would we say in the classroom, fashioned so perfectly down to our tablets. The tiny sticks of chalk. We couldn’t hold them without glue. They kept falling to the floor. So now, we hold them forever. God says look more human, so we comply, open our eyes wide. Tilt our heads. But still, god owns the blue walls. The windows that look upon nothing. Owns the chairs we keep slipping from. The words we scribble on slips of paper from our tiny mouths to God’s enormous ears.
the sparrow Never trust a sparrow, the tiny quiver. The arrow through the ribcage shot plumb from the trees. After all, in nature, we are all trying to kill or be killed by love. By sweet music. One bird, then another. Sticks and stones. We build our bones around hope. Sure-footed on the branch. The way we sang each morning to let everyone know we were still there, still alive. After the blackness we plunged into and out of intact. So many things that could still us in the darkness, but didn’t. So many that loved us, but couldn’t. After all, the sparrow wrote a letter, folded it around a feather. Launched it straight into the nest. Then nothing. Only night and trees, and the wind that takes our breath.
little fish Carry a bowl to catch his blood, where it sinks into the ground, there by the yew tree. The little pond. The little life you carved from pussy willow and abandoned dock boards. When they ask you, say yes, it was I, but the body was cold for weeks before they knew it was gone. Underwater, time is hardly real—all minnows and sunlight and an approximation of trees. At the bottom, already half dead through winter, eyes open wide. The things you saw, there in the depths unreal, unmarred by daylight and so white and dark. The robin floating the surface but never coming down. Feathers and fins and so much red.
the museum of curiosities
You can see the two-faced kitten for only a dime. A monkey riding a goat for one dollar. The creatures line up in their glass cases and watch the humans wander through unmarred. Posing with hats and umbrellas. With coats and eyeglasses. So human and yet, they, too, arrange themselves on cue. The woman and child holding a cookie in his fat little fingers. The man carrying a briefcase filled with bibles. They hover over a box of birds. All of them, bodies falling so cleanly into their part. The girl clutching her broken doll was so sullen All pinafores and petticoats and pout. Later, at a place called home, the mother will tuck her into bed, smooth the curls from her hair. Here, the rabbits stand wide eyed through the night. The lights in the museum dim and we all feel the animals in our bodies unwind, curl, and fall fast asleep.
the fly No matter where you go, it’s all shit and rot. In the field, they don’t find the dead calves for days. Fruit grows soft on the vine, and I’m here for it-every hole that needs filling, every mouth slack open and eyes glazed over with death. The robin fell from the nest and already the insects were inside its feathered body, breaking it down into earth. Hard to tell what is living, already dying. The ticker winding down to the final hour. Muscle grown loose around bones, skin sag. and broken teeth. How to know the difference between the already and the almost, not yet. Sometimes impossible. Especially when god keeps lining up the bodies so lifelike. Yesterday, the little girl in the field who buried the bird so carefully with her rhyme but startled at my crawl up her leg. Already her insides grown black with char.
epithalamium We mistook the wedding for a funeral. The beginning for the end. Too much white satin and bits of fur. An easy mistake in the museum’s dim light. The fright we felt thicken in our tiny bodies like a mouse. We line up in the pews and sing hallelijah but God cares not for the small things, belly crawl and twisted tail. Even perfect, we were already broken. The farmer who wrapped us in pillowcases and set us loose in the river. Never stood a chance, floating our way toward happiness. Or here, where the halogens flicker but we’re too blind to know Which is the bride? Which is the ghost? Which creature holds the bouquet? Which the flowers on the grave?
cock robin speaks from the grave
So much gets buried. The song, The worm. The soft feathered spring. We all lose our innocence as soon as the ground goes soft. Its muck and tumble. I was looking away when the nest unraveled and out fell a half dozen eggs, blue as the ocean. Before long the earth devoured them—little shell, little yolk. I broke my wing thrashing into the same window, the same time every March. I keep mistaking It for sky or the sea. Each time, the crunch of my bones a surprise as I crumble. But again, the next morning the same little teacup, the same high note. Every mended bone longing again to be broken anew. To be shot clean through.
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