Charles Harper Webb
<-- Change the channel | BACK TO THE GUIDE | More of this channel -->
Amateur Fossil-Hound Rocks Paleontology World
—Weekly World News
New Zealand was too small for dinosaurs,
experts agreed. Any on board when it pulled
free from Gondwana, the mega-continent,
would have died out, or shrunk like the dwarf deer
on Florida's keys: thunder-lizards reduced to yipping.
"Bosh and bupkis," Joan Wiffen replied.
This grandmother-of-nine ransacked dry
creek-beds like the bargain tables at LeMay's.
At Mangahouanga, where a Cretaceous river
emptied its pockets into the sea, she unearthed
plesiosaurs with ten-foot necks and needle teeth,
plus a monstrous forty-four-foot mosasaur.
Still, Granny Joan dreamed of land monsters:
her Kiwi Isle jolting beneath T-Rex's stride.
She turned up teeth, inside a year. Then ribs
and vertebrae. But were they there because she
called them? Did her yearning cross eons,
sustaining the saurians long enough to grow
huge, die, and fossilize? Did she create
the bones, her mind filling barren stones
the way God filled eight-hundred-year-old wombs
in Genesis? Did people live that long
back then? Do UFOs watch us today?
That's why I love these stories: No one knows.
Night of the Lepus
The meteor
that hits his
hutches on
Palm Sunday
is so small,
the farmer
barely stirs
in bed. Next
morning, though,
farm and farmer are
gone: not eaten, burned,
or smothered in star-slime—
smashed to muddy ooze
by giant thumper-feet.
I forget how the crew-
cut hero (Poisoned
carrots? Crater Lake as a
stew pot?) kills the monsters.
I recall reaction shots: bearded Paul
Bunyans in skivvie-fouling fear, intercut
with snarling, buck-toothed, powderpuff-
tailed mutant bunnies. Ogled by a micro-
scope, the curviest blonde heroine will
support enough fanged jaws, tentacles,
and globs of goo to cast a million horror
shows. Science, like life, is scary stuff.
Yet true cuddliness exists. Some long ears
always bring a smile. Some fur seems
made to snuggle. Some eyes glow too
gently opaline to chill the scarediest kid's
spine. Some crinkly noses couldn't possibly
drag scaly Death behind. In this world that thrives
on pain, some things are still too cute to be monsters.
Hero Frog Hops Five Miles to Save Schoolgirls
—Weekly World News
"I didn't kick out of the Amazon slime to die this way,"
I told myself as, pinned under their Barbie bikes,
Pam and Amy whimpered in the dust. I wriggled
free from Amy's pocket—where she stuffed me,
even though I peed—and started up out of the steep,
thorn-spiked gully where the girls had rolled.
I'd gotten out-of-shape and lazy in my terrarium,
waiting for dazed store-crickets to blunder by.
Now I ached to squat in that rutted trail, and cry.
My skin was flayed after a hundred yards of the slog
ahead of me. My eyes felt like dry holes stuffed
with sweetgum-burs. The sun flamed down, unfiltered
by ozone—sun that's killing frogs worldwide, breeding
tadpole monstrosities. Three times I hid in sticker-vines
to dodge needle-beaked birds. I hopped into a scum-
green pool, and barely saw the cottonmouth in time.
"I can't make it," I thought, then pictured Amy's face
smudged with tears and grime. When I couldn't hop,
I crawled until the summer cottage rose in front of me.
Stair by stair, I dragged myself onto the porch,
then, croaking my heart out, slammed against the door.
I came to in Amy's mom's pocket, jolting down the trail.
We found the girls: bruised, but okay. As for me
today—my vision's shot; my feet are nubs; my skin's
gone numb, and warty as a toad's. Amy's lost
interest in me; six months is eons, when you're eight
years old. My quarter-hour of fame didn't swell
my blistered head, though two fat ladies almost
kissed me. "He must be a princess. Too dang smart
to be a prince," they said.
"Amateur Fossil-Hound Rocks Paleontology World" first published in Slant; "Night of the Lepus" first published in Burnside Review; "Hero Frog Hops Five Miles to Save Schoolgirls" first published in Poems & Plays.
Bio
Charles Harper Webb's book Shadow Ball: New & Selected Poems was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2009. Recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations, Webb teaches Creative Writing at California State University, Long Beach.