The Wax Museum | Thomas Piekarski

On the crowded streets of modern Cannery Row
visitors from around the world flock like pigeons
come to boost their moods amid the candy, curios,
ocean spray, hotels, seafood, music and neon signs.
In the basement of an indoor boutique bazar wait
virtual humanoids locked in time, their presentations
recorded, canned. They indoctrinate visitors despite
the fact that they’re constructed primarily of wax.
Before I engage the possible misadventure
of taking a walk through that musky cellar,
I sit motionless on a bench outside, contemplate
beside the popular Bubba Gump shrimp house,
when I feel I’m being shanghaied by regression,
mind tossed back to a Monterey of the Ohlone,
of missionaries, fishermen, writers, pirates,
madams, salmon and sardines by the millions.

As I walk past the Sterling Silver gift shop
I note the cute pink dolphin plush for sale
on the ticket taker’s railing. I bid farewell to
Gourmet Express and the Bargetto wine room
then watch my step down a dusty stairway
and descend to where those figures reside.
They’re oblivious to the twenty-first century,
posturing factoids lacking minds of their own.

Once inside the museum, individual scenes light up
when I press big red buttons, and set in motion those
sculpted and clothed impostors with heads, hands
and lips moving in concert with their narrations,
historical depictions first of the native Indians,
followed by Spanish explorers, Mexican settlers,
and a most official John Steinbeck presiding over
cannery workers that toil all day at a conveyor.

These half-art mechanisms, purveyors of pain,
remind us that mortality is a moment away.
Although they’d command me I will not yield:
my psyche bolts over a solid blue ocean as I
view the grizzly bear getting gored by a bull
and father Serra pitching Indians Catholicism.
Then in my imagination I watch those dummies
prance in a pool of molten paraffin and acid tears.

Indian Review | Author | Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared in Nimrod, Portland Review, Kestrel, Cream City Review, Poetry Salzburg, Boston Poetry Magazine, Gertrude, The Bacon Review, and many others. He has published a travel guide, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems.