Suburban Dusk

BY BERT MEYERS

     One girl in a red dress leaves the shopping center with empty hands: and you believe in the future—you’ve seen a drop of blood flee from the luminous cells of a corpse.

     But the sky slips a coin in the slot between two buildings. Lights go on. Distorted creatures appear. A car, like an angry heart, explodes.

     And a vast erysipelas spreads over the hills. What can you do? Each night, the city becomes a butterfly, trembling in its oil.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159250/suburban-dusk 

I initially chose this poem because of how confusing the imagery was. It seemed like a dozen different things were happening one after another, yet each moment was vividly poignant. The last stanza is specifically why I chose the poem because of how it describes the city as a “butterfly, trembling in its oil”. However, other than that, none of this poem made one wit of sense to me. 

I decided to start at the beginning and decrypt some of the metaphors in the text. The opening lines introduce the image of a girl leaving a shopping center with empty hands, which serves as a symbol of disappointment or unfulfilled desires. The line ends with a colon, indicating that the following sentence relates back to the experience the girl has had. The statement “and you believe in the future” suggests that the speaker sees hope in this seemingly small and insignificant event. However, the next lines introduce a stark contrast to this hopeful image by describing the “drop of blood flee from the luminous cells of a corpse.” This image is macabre and suggests a sense of violence and mortality, which undermines the hope in the previous line with this mocking and goading tone. It also has the sense that something is dying by connecting the words luminous and corpse, while the blood is in the process of fleeing. In my mind there is a connection between the red dress and the drop of blood. It almost twists the entire paragraph to show this encompassing distortion and wrongness to an otherwise peaceful world. 

Since this is the first stanza after the title, the imagery also places her in an empty shopping center with the backdrop of a suburban dusk. Even as the chaos in the text warps the world around it, there is this sense of beauty for the world we live in. However, this is combined with the tone of desolation that gives a vividly surreal image of the world.

The next stanza begins with a contradictory word: “But”. Nothing in the second stanza breaks away from the convoluted nature of the first stanza, yet the 2nd stanza still begins with the contrasting clause of “But”. I’m honestly stumped as to why the author chose to put that kind of break there. At first, I thought he was shifting the entire poem into this new setting of a massive game. Almost a second chance from the grim corpse of the first stanza, a revitalization from God himself. A replay of the game of life, so massive that the token fits between skyscrapers. However, I didn’t really think that fit with the style and message of how the poem was written. I realized that the coin slotted between 2 buildings is probably the sun coming down the length of these buildings and fully setting. The poem is shifting from dusk to night. 

The author then uses the short sentence of “Lights go on” almost feels like he’s flipping a switch in the world he’s created. The distorted creatures are like the humans, animals, and shadows that come out in the night. It creates this pervading sense of wrongness. That what’s coming out really should not be there. The car exploding like a heart feels visceral and out of place, a violent lashing out of all the wrong tension in the poem. The whole stanza has this snapshot-like quality of this moment when the sun sets and the city comes to life in this corrupted way. 

The last stanza begins with the word “erysipelas”. I started by searching up what the word erysipelas mean’t. I learned that it is this nasty red skin infection that affects animals and people. It is sometimes called the Diamond Skin disease, and it’s almost like a red blight that takes over the surface of your body. The use of the word “erysipelas,” a type of skin infection, adds a foreboding sense of decay while the metaphor of the city as a butterfly highlights its fragility and transience. The overall tone of the poem is one of unease and unpredictability, as the speaker is left with a sense of helplessness and uncertainty. 

Feel free to look at images of the Diamond Skin Disease here -> Ew

Looking more at the final line, “What can you do? Each night, the city becomes a butterfly, trembling in its oil,” suggests that the speaker feels helpless in the face of these events and that the city is fragile and vulnerable. What can you do? Is addressed to the reader and adds a tone of submission and defeat. Like you can’t stop the wind by blowing or drain the ocean by drinking. Finally, A butterfly trembling in oil is this delicate imagery. It moves the plot away from the wrongness, to something delicate that’s been hurt. You want to protect and help the butterfly, and it invokes a sense of sadness. But what can you do? The butterfly is vulnerable to the strangeness of the night. 

As a whole I find it interesting how the author has taken a sunset out of its typical place on a savannah or in the ocean and placed its beauty in the suburbs. From there he twisted and warped the world around it. It speaks to the human experience in the modern world: conflicting emotions of hope and despair. The vivid imagery and sensory language create a haunting and unsettling atmosphere that stays with the reader long after they have finished reading. The poem invites the reader to reflect on the fragility of life and the challenges of navigating a world filled with both beauty and violence.