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University of Northern Iowa
Saturdays with My Father at the Museum of Natural HistoryAuthor(s): Robert McNamaraSource: The North American Review, Vol. 291, No. 2, The National Poetry Month Issue (Mar. -Apr., 2006), p. 38Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127576 .
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N A R
JOHN RANDOLPH CARTER
Dinosaurs
In a dream I see a stegosaurus
modeling women's underwear in
Nordstrom's. When I awake and
go outside I find dinosaurs
in the front yard. Where are the
neighbors' houses? I see only a grassy savannah dotted with
strange trees and scattered herds
of diplodocus moving slowly,
dipping their long necks, grazing. Inside the house, spacemen in pink metallic tights and silver boots are helping themselves to the
contents of my refrigerator,
making sandwiches, peeling bananas,
opening bottles of beer.
They nod as I pass. I wander into
the TV room, sit on the couch, and stare blankly at the
closed doors of the cabinet.
A strange bird with long bright feathers comes to the door and asks if he can use the telephone. I say yes, and turn to gaze into the backyard.
More dinosaurs?little ones, running around,
biting each other. I lean my head back, close my eyes and doze.
I dream that I'm reclining on a couch
in a therapist's office, telling him
all this as he sits with his back
to me, staring out the window and
periodically down at his writing pad on which he scribbles some notes.
When I finish my story he turns
to face me and smiles exposing a
gleaming golden tooth, so bright I have to close my eyes against the light.
LYN LIFSHIN
Thirty Miles West of Chicago
paint chips slowly. It's so still you can almost hear it
pull from a porch.
Cold grass claws
like fingers in a
wolf moon. A man
stands in corn bristles
listening, watching as if something could grow from
putting a dead child
in the ground
ROBERT McNAMARA
Saturdays With My Father at The Museum of Natural History
Even as bones they were sublime, the sky
scraping brachyo- and brontosauri,
tree-boned haunches, handfuls of arm-length claws,
T. rex with teeth uncountable as stars.
In my mind, fleshed, they ripped and gnawed.
Crossing Central Park at dusk, I'd see
the giants grazing still, the swaying treetops
hiding some great nibbling head, and hear
them in the ground-juddering thunder as our subway shot like progress from the dark.
Then swallowed us, like some great whale or ark.
38 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW March-April 2006
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