Hypothetical Death Machine In The Form Of A Roller Coaster by Tina Gross

This poem had to of come about on a fall Saturday, because that’s when there is time for yard work, gutter cleaning, farmer’s markets, pumpkins and banter about the euthanasia rollercoaster. This poem will make you think, and you should do it while watching nature's gardeners; squirrels, outside your window this Sunday.

Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer.

This month, to remind us poetry is often hidden in plain sight all around us, just waiting for us to unpack it, Lyricality’s Founding Director Tracy Rittmueller shares Poems and Poets as Gifts.

Tina Gross was guest editor for Sunday Morning Lyricality last month, and so I wanted to begin by sharing one of her poems, “Hypothetical Death Machine In The Form Of A Roller Coaster,” inspired by a news story that fascinated her. I’ve frequently heard poets talking about their poems as gifts, something that grew out of a spark of inspiration received.

I like to think of epigraphs as extra gifts from poets to the readers, a hint about the breadcrumb trail of the creative process that led to this particular poem. Here, Tina’s long epigraph includes a  hyperlink, foreshadowing a nesting box of thoughtful gifts to unpack in this stunner of a poem. 

This poem brilliantly lures me in with the homey images of pumpkins, babies, cell phones, and two squirrels in our yard / squeeing in a pile of leafy sludge. But instead of comforting me like apple pie, it leaves me with a feeling of roller-coaster queasiness and unsettling questions. The knowledge that Tina has been an anti-war activist leads me to take this poem as seriously as the reality of death. 

The final words in the 13th line of the second stanza, If they live, mimic the roller-coaster-plunge effect. Just one line short of a double sonnet, I hover breathlessly before freefall into nothingness, grasping at the thin air of many unanswered questions: what kind of oblivious baby are we (culture/ society/ individuals) trying to balance and hold on to? How efficacious are farmers’ markets, clean-ups, and clean-outs in an increasingly contaminated world? Why do we allow unqualified euphoria to numb us to the precariousness of life in a continually warring world? What ideas and escapes do we willingly climb into? And how much choice do we actually have about whether we are safe or exposed?    

In case you’re loving the idea of a well-crafted poem as nesting gift-boxes, here’s a link to help you unpack the word squee.  

— Tracy Rittmuller

Hypothetical Death Machine In The Form Of A Roller Coaster by Tina Gross

“Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in aeronautics/space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful.”
http://julijonasurbonas.lt/euthanasia-coaster/  

The stem breaks off in your hand.
Now you have to carry the pumpkin 
you just bought in both arms, 
or balance it on your hip, 
an oblivious baby who won’t hold on. 
Your phone is starting to slip
from between ear and shoulder, 
but you keep on telling me
about the euthanasia rollercoaster—
the concept, the tabletop scale model
with little fake landscaping,
the brilliant but slapworthy
artist/engineer/provocateur
explaining his design in a video.

I tell you to hang up and hold onto your farmers’ market haul.
I’m watching two squirrels in our yard
squeeing in a pile of leafy sludge
we cleaned out of the rain gutters.
The winged parts of the maple helicopters
are already decomposed, leaving behind
exposed seeds. They must be contaminated 
by runoff from the asphalt shingles,
but squirrel euphoria is unqualified. 
The pumpkin shell will eventually
be left out for them too. They can 
climb inside if they want. If they live.

***

Tina Gross is a poet, librarian, and activist originally from Battle Lake, Minnesota. Found poetry and constrained writing are a significant focus of her work, and she experiments with techniques that incorporate search results and other features of the research tools that she helps to create and maintain as a cataloging/metadata librarian. She just completed an MFA in creative writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She was one of eight tenured faculty (four librarians) laid off by St. Cloud State University in 2020, which now has no librarians in technical services. Follow her on Twitter @aboutness or read her found poem about getting laid off at mcsweeneys.net/articles/my-layoff-letter-ground-up-with-text-from-meat-processing-trade-magazines

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