J. Hope Stein
Invention of the Electric Chair
“Let us agree, there are the things we can see
& the things we can’t”
Husband pulls my coat—Splays it--
over my lap (& the-now-what-are-we?)
Ouch!— I am sitting on someone’s knuckles.
The persistent fist opens
under my skirt (& the-now-what-are-we?),
I begin settle into its fingers.
Husband says, “This is what we call the electric chair.”
I dampen in the lumbar
& recite the headlines of today:
Walt Whitman’s heart was very large
and was the only absolutely healthy organ.
The brain weighed but forty-six ounces[i]
the body in a constant stream as it lay.[ii]
Husband & his machinists
form a semi-circle
at my hip & waist-—arms up
in the now-what-are-we & my girdle--
This is what Husband calls, “assembly line.”
I hold onto its nimbus,
& recite the headlines of today
as an ungovernable leg &
a negligent thigh
spasm to the now-what-are-we
& the now-what-are-we & the now-what-are-we
& their heads:
Walt Whitman’s heart was very large
and was the only absolutely healthy organ.
The brain weighed but forty-six ounces[iii]
the body in a constant stream as it lay.[iv]
In machine howl & machine yelp
there is no gathering of dust.
One must yell as an angry landlady
into the big-holed hinged jaw
monkey-mouth of history to be heard.
In short, I want something in my mouth.
Husband says, “this is what we call consumption”--
Hoists his finger up in the custom of me—
feeds me an elixir (ice cream)
until my mouth freezes, my speech impedes
& I scream--Funny!—
Although we are surrounded by people constantly—
Me & the warm palm in my hosiery—
we are very much alone.
Elephant
Hold your nose: The elephant
lay dead on the platform,
smoke rising--
Her otherwise elegant body
is still but in jubilee motion
like a carousel pony
drowned. Her trunk snorkels in the air.
& The song she sings
is less a song than a gasp
in the midst of your own case
of the hiccups— Smoke--
The universal signal, from a distance, of man.
*
In the public electrocution
of Topsy the elephant,
1,500 witnesses gathered,
to watch the breath leave
the body gone. Automobiles
alongside trees on the boulevard
park & compete for air.
& You can’t blame them.
Breath abandons the body—Junk.
In that case, why, on earth, do we
even have a body?
This is what the elephant
was thinking when electrical impulses
galloped her spine
& breath shot out
her nozzle like a musket--
Spark—the Inventor administers the storm.
*
In hindsight it will be the length & breadth
of her grey ears
our minds tether to metal poles
instead of the pillars
of her ankles. Poisoned potatoes
instead of a bucket of slop
& cyanide carrots on her wet elephant tongue.
The elephant lay dead, but listen:
The breath leaves the body,
(it always will). But it’s the klutz
of the body, each day that exits,
cell-by-cell itself.
(I am more & more
the person who wrote this,
then less & less.) The breath
misses the body— yes.
*
There’s something in me that is wild.
This is what the elephant
was thinking when her trainer
fed her a lit cigarette
& she lifted him with the same trunk
he taught her to wave hello--
& smashed his bones
& cracked open his skull.
The elephant, stomping
in dizzy arithmetic,
from a distance,
looked to be putting out a rogue cigarette.
*
There’s something in me that is wild.
This is what the Inventor was thinking
under his eyelids--
6,000 volts, 10 seconds.
A man in the audience
blows his nose. This is the sound
of the elephant.
*
When an elephant dies in the wild, its carcass
is a 10,000 pound earth
for a variety of animals
to gorge on.
“All is procession.” Body to jelly,
body to jam—Harmony beheaded
is gorgeous infection.
What is a man? This is what
was tormenting the elephant
& we saw the evidence
in the scabs of her underbelly
when she collapsed—A confusion
of smoke & hats
from the perspective of trees.
A howl deep
in the elephant throat,
until all that’s left
is to fall.
[i] “Death of Walt Whitman” Springfield Sunday Republican (March 27, 1892)
[ii] “Walt Whitman Buried” Morning Olympian (March, 1892)
[iii] “Death of Walt Whitman” Springfield Sunday Republican (March 27, 1892)
[iv] “Walt Whitman Buried” Morning Olympian (March, 1892)
__________
The Inventor’s Last Breath gets its title from Thomas Edison’s last breath, which was allegedly captured and saved in a test tube and is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
The Inventor’s Last Breath is a love story between an Inventor (loosely based on Edison) and his wife Mary, against the backdrop of American history, (spanning Edison’s life) – from the Civil War to the Great Depression– including the invention of the phonograph, the light bulb, the motion picture camera, the talking doll, the stock ticker, the electric chair, the assassination of President McKinley, the electrocution of his assassin and Edison’s public electrocution of Topsy the Elephant.
J. Hope Stein is the author of the chapbooks [Talking Doll]: (Dancing Girl Press, 2012), [Mary]: (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2012) and Corner Office (H_NGM_N, 2011). Her full length manuscript The Inventor’s Last Breath, was a finalist for the Alice James Kinereth Gensler Award and her chapbook Light’s Golden Jubilee was a finalist for the Ahsahta Chapbook Contest. You can find her work in Verse, Tarpaulin Sky, Everyday Genius, Ping Pong, Web del Sol, movingpoems.com and Poetry International.
J. Hope Stein is also the editor of PoetryCrush.com and the author of the poetry/humor site eecattings.com.
Invention of the Electric Chair
“Let us agree, there are the things we can see
& the things we can’t”
Husband pulls my coat—Splays it--
over my lap (& the-now-what-are-we?)
Ouch!— I am sitting on someone’s knuckles.
The persistent fist opens
under my skirt (& the-now-what-are-we?),
I begin settle into its fingers.
Husband says, “This is what we call the electric chair.”
I dampen in the lumbar
& recite the headlines of today:
Walt Whitman’s heart was very large
and was the only absolutely healthy organ.
The brain weighed but forty-six ounces[i]
the body in a constant stream as it lay.[ii]
Husband & his machinists
form a semi-circle
at my hip & waist-—arms up
in the now-what-are-we & my girdle--
This is what Husband calls, “assembly line.”
I hold onto its nimbus,
& recite the headlines of today
as an ungovernable leg &
a negligent thigh
spasm to the now-what-are-we
& the now-what-are-we & the now-what-are-we
& their heads:
Walt Whitman’s heart was very large
and was the only absolutely healthy organ.
The brain weighed but forty-six ounces[iii]
the body in a constant stream as it lay.[iv]
In machine howl & machine yelp
there is no gathering of dust.
One must yell as an angry landlady
into the big-holed hinged jaw
monkey-mouth of history to be heard.
In short, I want something in my mouth.
Husband says, “this is what we call consumption”--
Hoists his finger up in the custom of me—
feeds me an elixir (ice cream)
until my mouth freezes, my speech impedes
& I scream--Funny!—
Although we are surrounded by people constantly—
Me & the warm palm in my hosiery—
we are very much alone.
Elephant
Hold your nose: The elephant
lay dead on the platform,
smoke rising--
Her otherwise elegant body
is still but in jubilee motion
like a carousel pony
drowned. Her trunk snorkels in the air.
& The song she sings
is less a song than a gasp
in the midst of your own case
of the hiccups— Smoke--
The universal signal, from a distance, of man.
*
In the public electrocution
of Topsy the elephant,
1,500 witnesses gathered,
to watch the breath leave
the body gone. Automobiles
alongside trees on the boulevard
park & compete for air.
& You can’t blame them.
Breath abandons the body—Junk.
In that case, why, on earth, do we
even have a body?
This is what the elephant
was thinking when electrical impulses
galloped her spine
& breath shot out
her nozzle like a musket--
Spark—the Inventor administers the storm.
*
In hindsight it will be the length & breadth
of her grey ears
our minds tether to metal poles
instead of the pillars
of her ankles. Poisoned potatoes
instead of a bucket of slop
& cyanide carrots on her wet elephant tongue.
The elephant lay dead, but listen:
The breath leaves the body,
(it always will). But it’s the klutz
of the body, each day that exits,
cell-by-cell itself.
(I am more & more
the person who wrote this,
then less & less.) The breath
misses the body— yes.
*
There’s something in me that is wild.
This is what the elephant
was thinking when her trainer
fed her a lit cigarette
& she lifted him with the same trunk
he taught her to wave hello--
& smashed his bones
& cracked open his skull.
The elephant, stomping
in dizzy arithmetic,
from a distance,
looked to be putting out a rogue cigarette.
*
There’s something in me that is wild.
This is what the Inventor was thinking
under his eyelids--
6,000 volts, 10 seconds.
A man in the audience
blows his nose. This is the sound
of the elephant.
*
When an elephant dies in the wild, its carcass
is a 10,000 pound earth
for a variety of animals
to gorge on.
“All is procession.” Body to jelly,
body to jam—Harmony beheaded
is gorgeous infection.
What is a man? This is what
was tormenting the elephant
& we saw the evidence
in the scabs of her underbelly
when she collapsed—A confusion
of smoke & hats
from the perspective of trees.
A howl deep
in the elephant throat,
until all that’s left
is to fall.
[i] “Death of Walt Whitman” Springfield Sunday Republican (March 27, 1892)
[ii] “Walt Whitman Buried” Morning Olympian (March, 1892)
[iii] “Death of Walt Whitman” Springfield Sunday Republican (March 27, 1892)
[iv] “Walt Whitman Buried” Morning Olympian (March, 1892)
__________
The Inventor’s Last Breath gets its title from Thomas Edison’s last breath, which was allegedly captured and saved in a test tube and is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
The Inventor’s Last Breath is a love story between an Inventor (loosely based on Edison) and his wife Mary, against the backdrop of American history, (spanning Edison’s life) – from the Civil War to the Great Depression– including the invention of the phonograph, the light bulb, the motion picture camera, the talking doll, the stock ticker, the electric chair, the assassination of President McKinley, the electrocution of his assassin and Edison’s public electrocution of Topsy the Elephant.
J. Hope Stein is the author of the chapbooks [Talking Doll]: (Dancing Girl Press, 2012), [Mary]: (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2012) and Corner Office (H_NGM_N, 2011). Her full length manuscript The Inventor’s Last Breath, was a finalist for the Alice James Kinereth Gensler Award and her chapbook Light’s Golden Jubilee was a finalist for the Ahsahta Chapbook Contest. You can find her work in Verse, Tarpaulin Sky, Everyday Genius, Ping Pong, Web del Sol, movingpoems.com and Poetry International.
J. Hope Stein is also the editor of PoetryCrush.com and the author of the poetry/humor site eecattings.com.