One of the first things I do on receiving a prompt for a poetry assignment from Andy or Mara https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/31982590/819144668 is to look up the word in an etymological dictionary. In the case of ‘exposition,’ I immediately had an inkling that I wanted to write something about the use of this word—still somewhat foreign-sounding and unnatural in English—to refer to a grand exhibition or world fair. I was delighted to discover, on consulting the etymological dictionary that the word was first used in this sense in English on the occasion of the Crystal Palace World Exhibition/Exposition of 1851. From there various ideas flowed into a fertile stream of consciousness and I came up with this—characteristically dark but I hope still entertainingly irreverent and light-hearted—take on the prompt.

At the back of my mind throughout this poem is another that I have been mulling over for some time on the subject of the Chicago World Fair of 1893, which was the first to showcase electrical lighting on a grand scale but also the deliberately chosen field of operations for one of the first recorded serial killers, whom I reference obliquely in the closing hall-of-fame/infamy section of this poem. There is something highly disturbing yet intellectually fascinating about the idea of someone using the long shadows cast by the blaze of light that accompanies a technologically optimistic world exposition as cover for atavistically evil acts elevated to an industrial scale.

 

Expo’ 1851

The crystal palace is Solomonically

as many feet long as

the years of our Lord that stretch

from our Savior’s birth up

to this zenith of the industrial age.

Vic & Al are excited about the glass-house exposé

of all that is great about Brittany—once wayward daughter

turned stunning debutante; the gears of genes, hormones,

breeding and old money all finally meshing together

to create a national treasure we can all be proud of—a fine filly,

an irresistible machine.

Charlie Darwin

is chipper about the science. The whole haute bourgeoisie

of England and beyond

traipses through the marvel,

for no more than a guinea a head.

Good value for money they purr,

as they gawp at the exotic orchids and high-tech looms.

A site-specific demonstration of the whole cotton production process

from bud on sunned plant in southern Louisiana

to dark rain-drenched Satanic mill in Salford

to starched shirt on a dresser

—minus, of course, the child labor,

slavery, asymmetrical tariffs,

unemployment statistics, workplace accidents

and the hacking cough of lint-choked lungs—

elicits much interest and acclaim.

The best Frogs and sour Krauts can meanwhile do

is to turn up with machine guns and bombs.

“People in glass houses…” English gents

and vets mutter

disapprovingly through bushes of moustaches

still decorating stiff upper lips.

Drinkers dutifully toast queen and nation in East End pubs,

before rushing out for a piss. Nature calls.

*

The great event is, of course,

as befits a great parliamentary democracy—

over which Ollie Cromwell still waves his wand of a sword—

not without detractors.

Chad Marx thinks

it is all a ginormous unseemly fetish—overexposed—

unworthy of the civilized world still to be—

orange blossom round a latrine.

And the right-wing papers sneer

that the money could have been

better spent on tax cuts for the country squires

who read them grumblingly in clubs

between enemas and games of cards,

and worry that the hoi polloi

or—God forbid—‘jocks’ and ‘blacks’ and ‘jack-the-lads’

might ‘get ideas.’

*

Meanwhile, Messrs. Holmes, Mr. Hearst, Mr. Edison and their ilk,

Dr. Jekyll, Jack the Ripper, Mr. Hyde, Dr. Frankenstein’s

monster, Rothschilds and Gettys,

Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg,

Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Trump

greedily survey the proceedings

with as yet unborn beady eyes.