Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Charles Harper Webb’s "Mummy Meets Hot-Headed Naked Ice-Borers" is a wild collision of history, science, and speculative absurdity, blending ancient tragedy with an almost grotesque sense of humor. The poem juxtaposes the real-life agony of Djedmaatesankh—a tenth-century BCE Egyptian temple musician who died from an abscessed tooth—with the fictional creatures known as “hot-headed naked ice-borers,” bizarre Antarctic predators that melt ice and consume their prey. Through this surreal comparison, Webb explores themes of mortality, historical distance, and the absurdity of suffering across time.

The poem’s opening situates Djedmaatesankh within a precise historical framework: "Djedmaatesankh—temple musician, wife of Paankhntof, daughter of Shedtaope—died childless, aged thirty-five, in the tenth century BC, of blood poisoning from an abscessed incisor." The specificity of her lineage and title lends an air of scholarly detachment, as if the speaker is introducing an exhibit in a museum. This clinical tone, however, is immediately disrupted by the grotesque imagery of the abscess: "CAT scans of her mummy show how the abscess chewed a walnut-sized hole in her upper jaw, gnawing bone the way the creatures called ?hot-headed naked ice-borers? gnaw tunnels through Antarctic ice." By equating the biological decay of her skull to the imagined feeding habits of an invented species, Webb fuses historical reality with speculative fiction, forcing the reader to question the logic of both.

The ice-borers themselves, described in ludicrously specific detail—"Six inches long, hairless and pink, they look in pictures like sea lions with tumors on their foreheads, and saber-teeth."—are as grotesque as the diseased jawbone of Djedmaatesankh. Their "tumors" are actually "lumps of bone, the skin of which writhes with blood vessels radiating heat." The combination of anatomical specificity and absurdity makes them almost believable, a reflection of how history and myth often merge in human understanding. Their feeding habits—ambushing penguins by melting the ice beneath them—reinforce their eerie similarity to the abscess, which erodes bone from within.

This scientific-fantastic digression leads to another historical tragedy: "Knowing about ice-borers might have saved French explorer Philippe Poisson, who disappeared in 1837." The fictionalized fate of Poisson—devoured by ice-borers—is treated with the same detached factuality as Djedmaatesankh’s suffering. The poem grimly imagines his end: "A pack collects under a penguin and, with their foreheads, melt the ice it’s standing on. The penguin sinks as in quicksand; the borers attack like piranha, leaving behind only beak, feathers, and feet— / as if the bird has taken them off before bed." The whimsical phrasing—comparing the remains to neatly removed pajamas—heightens the disturbing absurdity. The speaker forces us to consider both Poisson’s and Djedmaatesankh’s deaths in the same grotesque framework, linking them through the shared experience of suffering, whether by natural affliction or surreal predators.

The poem then shifts from detached speculation to a more intimate contemplation of grief and human response: "Think of Poisson, torn into fragments by their fangs. Think of Djedmaatesankh in the three weeks the abscess took to kill her." The imperative commands ("Think of") pull the reader into a more personal reflection. The poem wonders how their loved ones responded: "How did her husband feel, hearing her groan? Watching her corpse carried to the embalmers?" Did he mourn, or was he relieved? Did he curse the gods? These questions are never answered, only left to fester like the abscess itself.

From here, Webb’s characteristic absurdity resurfaces, shifting the focus to dreams and imagined hauntings. The poem wonders if "Poisson’s wife in Paris dreamed of penguin beaks, feathers, feet encased in ice." The surreal image of Philippe?s fragmented remains reappearing in dreams suggests that historical horrors do not simply vanish—they linger in the subconscious. The idea that Djedmaatesankh might have dreamed of "people in strange clothes"—modern archaeologists studying her remains—pushes the temporal dissonance further. The child in the present, observing the mummified body through a museum glass case, reacts with disgust: "made noises that sounded like ?Eeoo, gross,? his sister screamed, and had to be carried outside." The reversal is striking—Djedmaatesankh, once suffering in her own time, is now the specter haunting a child’s imagination.

The final, eerie lines complete the cycle of horror: "and that night dreamed of Djedmaatesankh walking toward her, gauze dripping from her shriveled, childless hands." The past does not rest, and suffering—whether historical, biological, or mythological—echoes through time, seeping into contemporary consciousness. Webb’s blending of real tragedy, fictional horror, and absurd humor underscores how human suffering, though individualized and distant in historical record, remains a universal, recurring experience.

"Mummy Meets Hot-Headed Naked Ice-Borers" is a darkly comic yet profoundly unsettling meditation on history, mortality, and the ways we process suffering. By placing ancient death alongside fictional Antarctic predators and nineteenth-century explorers, Webb collapses time, forcing us to recognize the absurdity and inevitability of decay. The poem suggests that history is not a distant, sealed-off record but a continuous cycle of pain, mystery, and imagination, where the line between reality and fiction is often as thin as the gauze on a mummy’s hands.

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