The Search for Wonka
Inspired by John McPhee's The Search for Marvin Gardens.
CHOCOLATE ROOM
Warm and wet, the river works slow muscle beneath fake grass. Pipes inhale and a jellyfish in the side tank pulses: twenty-four eyes, bell and perimeter, no center and all sensation. One token in motion, pattern is what stands in for a self.
CHOCOLATE RIVER
The boat once hauled children. Now, sugar sacks, a clipboard, light pooling under valves. I do the ordinary cycle: email, dishes, compost warming peel and rind. The wall says YOU ARE HERE, a spot between two infinities. I fall into sleep and climb back through static and morning takes attendance. Pulse, hunger, the candle burn of small griefs.
TUNNEL
An old photo floats by. Grandparents, a child, a roof, brown water climbing. Minutes later, no roof and three bodies, another child, carried inland. The girl falls through the roof and suspended by her shirttail in the rafters, stares without sight into the rushing pits below. Water keeps its own ledger.
VIOLET ROOM
Cold metal where the gum machine was. No shrinking girls here, only ballooning, expanding, pressure point pulling the facial skin tight. One winter, I kept a violet under a lamp.
FIZZLING ROOM
Ceiling fans idle where bubbles once threw bodies toward rotary blades. Rising is a cellular reflex you’ll have to knife out of you. Late afternoon amber light struck the panes. Another circuit, survived.
INVENTING ROOM
Dust everywhere and maybe some chrome. An everlasting explosion, self-stirred, continues, but all of the context is removed and so only pulse and collision remain. Jellyfish grammar. A floor that keeps sweeping you up to survival.
NUT ROOM
The news blares from underneath every person’s thumb, distant crises, a baby mobile above the public cradle. I can only play this square: rinse dishes, turn compost, fold laundry. Small, lawful moves that keep the piece in motion.
TV ROOM
Stars through glass, captured while vanishing and forced to return again and again without ceremony, without applause, without the lights. Between the poles, cold mineral and reluctant tender.
ELEVATOR
Only a shift and a service lift, dark is falling with no hurry. A garbage truck ambles down the street, orange strobes washing the trees. Losses are arranged like specimens. The tank glows and the glass hasn’t yet shattered and I sleep, body lowered through static onto the flood roof and a jellyfish with one long whisp of tentacle outstretched to me, a violet in its curled grasp.
There is only permission to keep waking and walking after the ones who suddenly are not. There is no inheritance here. On the roof, there is sugar breath and the stars turn their faces to me to complete another dip. The tour offers no finish, only shifts. Staying increments pattern and pattern carries the pieces. Even the ones inside the water, even the ones he didn’t finish.
This was inspired by one of my favorite pieces of nonfiction writing, “The Search for Marvin Gardens” by John McPhee.
The lamp’s always on
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Feel free to email me: smrcreates@gmail.com.