i. Diorama
—After “Sperm Whale and Giant Squid” (American Museum of Natural History)
the gallery a lesson in pretending: spray foam gowned in plastic, ceiling blanched with cyan.
false gulls drifting like eyelashes in matte sky. remember the unlit corner, the only exhibit not
behind glass? in those days you braved everything. you left the contours of your body. in the
dark chapel of a new york city museum: the whale, the invulnerable grin; the squid, the pink of
the unbruised tulip. in those days your father was the whole world, your child’s palm anticipating
his. at lunch, his thumbs a pair of chisels making sourdough dinosaurs, two soft jaws, buttering
in straight lines. why does the whale look so scratched up? you’d ask, his smile a half-moon
circle. what first scarred it? little sparkles, disposable camera dangled at your wrist. you did not
know then what the exhibition label said. for in those days you learned the space between fear
and prolonging it: benthic zap, smothered terror. leaning out far enough to see or almost touch
the squid and the whale, your hand and your father’s clasped together in the abyss. to think,
perhaps they were not so frightening after all. to spy the litter fallen around them like furtive
snow, cigarette butts and soda lids, a floor ashamed by its own stickiness. to leave quickly,
brushing at your skirt like a phantom wrapper, ascending to the hall of forests, drifting upward
through centuries of light.
II. Diorama (restored)
the gallery a lesson in pretending: spray foam gowned in plastic, ceiling blanched with cyan.
false gulls drifting like eyelashes in matte sky. remember the unlit corner, the only exhibit not
behind glass? in those days you braved everything. you left the contours of your body. in the
dark chapel of a new york city museum: the whale, the invulnerable grin; the squid, the pink of
the unbruised tulip. in those days your father was the whole world, your child’s palm anticipating
his. at lunch, his thumbs a pair of chisels making sourdough dinosaurs, two soft jaws, buttering
in straight lines. why does the whale look so scratched up? you’d ask, his smile a half-moon
circle. what first scarred it? little sparkles, disposable camera dangled at your wrist. you did not
know then what the exhibition label said. for in those days you learned the space between fear
and prolonging it: benthic zap, smothered terror. leaning out far enough to see or almost touch
the squid and the whale, your hand and your father’s clasped together in the abyss. to think,
perhaps they were not so frightening after all. to spy the litter fallen around them like furtive
snow, cigarette butts and soda lids, a floor ashamed by its own stickiness. to leave quickly,
brushing at your skirt like a phantom wrapper, ascending to the hall of forests, drifting upward
through centuries of light.
Loren Maria Guay is a poet and speculative fiction writer. Their poems have appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Breakwater Review, West Trade Review, and other publications; their work has been a finalist for the 2022 Peseroff Prize in Poetry and a Best of the Net nominee, and they are a 2024 Periplus Fellow. Born in Asunción, Paraguay and raised in Brooklyn, they currently spend their time between Chicago and Ann Arbor, MI, where they are pursuing a PhD in English and Education at the University of Michigan. You can find them on Bluesky @nightgleaming or at lmguay.com.
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