The Death of Santa Claus

“Marilyn’s Machine” by Charles Harper Webb (1995)

This poem, originally published in The Paris Review, was also collected into Reading the Water, along with “The Death of Santa Claus.” Again Webb uses an iconic figure, this time the actress Marilyn Monroe, to discuss humanity. Here, Marilyn buys a washing machine. The speaker notes the expectations the world has of Marilyn as a sex symbol in much the same way people have expectations of Santa Claus. A difference appears in the focus on Marilyn’s inner thoughts at the end:

[She] think[s] of a man thinking of her some distant day

when she is nothing but an image made from movies, 

photos, gossip, exposes—an image thinking of him 

thinking of her in her black wig and flowered muumuu,

rinsing, spinning till the dirt is washed away (Lines 20-24).

Both this and “The Death of Santa Claus” deal with the erasure of what is known to reveal a different state.

“The Tooth Fairy” by Charles Harper Webb (2003)

Originally published in Bryant Literary Review in 2003, “The Tooth Fairy” deals with a mythic figure who visits children and leaves them gifts, a character who is compared to “the Easter / Bunny, Santa Claus, and God” (Lines 18-19).