The Mummy in the Freeport Art Museum
Amongst the masterpieces of the small-town
Picasso's and Van Gogh's and photographs
of the rural poor and busts of Greek poets
or the molds of busts donated by the Art
Institute of Chicago to this dying
town's little museum, there was a mummy,
a real mummy, laid out in a dim-
lit room by himself. I used to go
to the museum just to visit him, a king
who, expecting an afterlife
of beautiful virgins and infinite food
and all the riches and jewels
he'd enjoyed in earthly life,
must have wondered how the hell
he'd ended up in Freeport, Illinois.
And I used to go alone into that room
and stand beside his sarcophagus and say,
"My friend, I've asked myself the same thing."