Nantucket Whaling Museum

Source: Nantucket Historical Association

Unpublished. At one point I stopped using punctuation, the word "and," and capitalization. I don't think it helped any but am reluctant now to change this one back, as it seems to fit the tone and tale. Always a mistake to borrow directly from the greats but it is a true story, being in Nantucket and looking for the Quaker graveyard. Obvious quote from Blind Willie Johnson's "Tear This Building Down", and a less obvious borrowing from Tom Waits.   Oh, and this.


Nantucket Whaling Museum

tired of painting the outside of things
the tooth of a whale looks nothing like a whale
tired of looking in from the outside of things
got to get inside the whale

an island boy at sea for months
under alien stars a wooden roof
his jackknife twirls at
the craft of every prisoner
to cut from boredom & mutton bone
fairy castles of elsewhereness
hard hands lost in the delicacy
of leaving behind a part of their own choosing

so the tooth of a whale comes not to the whale
but a wheel to fit a woman’s hand
a seahorse’s leg a mermaid’s slipper
a jagging wheel
to crimp blueberry pie for mother girlfriend
or a wad of tobacco
the boy considers his options
dips his fingertip into lampblack
tracing the web of scars incised along the back
get inside the whale

from a glance it’s clear no one comes
to the scrimshaw room on purpose
pale annex to the whaling museum
as for me it was raining & i was headed out for
the quaker graveyard
lowell yes imagining eavesdrop
but there are two graveyards as it turns out
& either way i was wrong
neither way leads to the end of the whale

trapped between blood & the stench of burning blubber
the sharks roll back their eyes as though even they
would not know what they do
as we refuse
the purposefulness of the wholly useless
the unicorn’s horn the gorgeous cartouche
carved into a jail cell wall
the hieroglyphs scrawled across the dying whale

last of summer it was & the last months
before sylvia was born
i came out from the museum & its odd ivory hoard
crossed the carriage road slick with rain
& was seated for lunch by an irish girl
tourist to tourist on summer furlough
islanders cast up on every island
the jonah special: get inside the whale

if the whale had his way he would
tear this building down
tear this building down
the adventuring boys hoist their gear and hie out
past trousseaus emptied of ivory & gold
to oil rigs in the gulf to trade porn for beer
& back again for no one remembers now how to whittle
no one remembers the end of the whale

then all shall don the robe of blubber
pass beneath the battered rib buttress
perfumed by ambergris the whalebone font anchors
an island a whale a body paused
to take on water & passengers
from the belly i hear the rumbling
of the pacific in unpeaceful gravid wildness
button up your overcoat
take with you leviathan in your jacket pocket
get inside the whale