Long titles. Sometimes they seem as superfluous as heroes in 19th-century Russian literature. Other times they lure you in like Circe when she’s in the mood for company. As Exhibit A, I give you Seth Peterson’s “Depiction of the Afterlife as a Frantic Search for Car Keys,” a prose poem that explores common ground between everyday experiences and the afterlife.
From the dawn of time, there have been many thoughts on what the afterlife might look like, but prospective (turned definite) readers might have trouble resisting a poem that compares it to looking for your car keys. Lost keys and the Grim Reaper make for strange bedfellows, after all. The juxtaposition of the two is a hook you are happy to be caught by.
Let’s follow the logic (or, better still, a lack thereof). This poem originally appeared in Had Magazine, a not-so-well known outpost in Poetry World that’s sure to reward readers who stop for refreshment:
“Depiction of the Afterlife as a Frantic Search for Car Keys” by Seth Peterson
It happens to you suddenly, a dagger dissecting through your stupor. Just a moment earlier, you were elsewhere, meticulously planning the groceries, drafting a retort from the comfort of your hatchback. You wonder how you got here. Your hands near the ignition, empty, hovering by a thin, metallic switch. Then, they’re rummaging through the hollow of your pocket, groping the air like spider legs, seconds away from death. But they’re not there. Not slumming in the shadowed tufts of carpet or glaring up from the upholstery. It suddenly dawns on you what happened, so you’re running toward the house, rewinding strips of memory. You should’ve left by now. Instead, you’re gliding past the doorway, countertops, refrigerator. You should have left by now. Your mind flips through a glossary of mistakes, & you’re cursing, hurling spittle with the couch cushions, second hands turning in the air. The gift card you lost, expired. The girl you should’ve kissed. Headlights are boring through the window, urging you to hurry. You remember that your family is waiting, going on without you, their laughing teeth suffused as if with starlight. But you can’t go on. You can’t. You know that you’re here, in the dark, for a reason. You just haven’t found it yet.
As it’s a story of sorts, the poem works well in a prose poem format. The speaker’s discombobulation comes through the embedded short sentences that pop up like rabbit punches of confusion: “You wonder how you got here,” “But they’re not there,” and both “You should’ve left by now” and its spelled-out repetition, “You should have left by now.”
Then it’s a quick tour of that old staple, your life flashing before your eyes as you make the whitewater (white noise?) passage from life to death: “The gift card you lost, expired,” “The girl you should’ve kissed,” and, most important to any person going away for a long stay, your family: “You remember that your family is waiting, going on without you, their laughing teeth suffused as if with starlight.” It’s a luminous metaphor, that, and a perfect contrast (family = happy, speaker = scared as hell) given the circumstances.
Ultimately, like all dreams, the speaker’s experience crash lands in confusion and frustration: “But you can’t go on. You can’t. You know that you’re here, in the dark, for a reason. You just haven’t found it yet.”
Unreasonable, isn’t it? We engage in the pursuit of happiness our entire lives, suspecting what we’ve found so far is fool’s gold, only to enter an afterlife of further searching. As in for car keys, a mundane item perfect as mockery (especially for dead men rummaging).
The poem explores on one of my favorite themes in literature — the one touched upon by Henry David Thoreau (“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”) and Bono (“But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”). The trouble is, most of us expect to be rewarded in the End (the capital-E one). Peterson posits, “What if it’s more of the same? What if the afterlife is just another quotidian experience? What if it’s more of us serving as our own worst critics, going through ‘a glossary of mistakes'”?
That’d be a Purgatory of some substance. Funny, in its way. And frightening, too.
