“Van Gogh at THE LUME” by Dan Grossman

Unsplash image by Redd F @raddfilms

Van Gogh at The Lume

The crows fly towards me over the wheatfields
in the Immersive Van Gogh Experience
and my heart starts racing like an EFI V8 engine.

Too much stimulation, like the last time 
I overdosed on sativa, up all night
 with hallucinations and a rapid heartbeat.

With Erik Satie on the speakers, I wander into 
the room where you can “Van Gogh yourself”
by stylizing your image after the master

who painted in the fields in the full sun,
who reveled in it “like a cicada.” Mercifully,
it’s quieter here, overlooking Pooh’s 100 acres

as the master’s ghost bumbles around
muttering, “Putain, qu'est-ce que c'est?”
He’s been through 50 of these light-shows

in the US alone and loathes their carbon footprint.
”Il faut avoir la nature pour peindre la nature,” he says.
I catch the flickering light of his ghost aura

in the corner of my eye as “The Starry Night
over the Rhone” comes down over a couple
capturing it all with their smartphones.

— previously published in The Indianapolis Review