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1
You tell me the heads
are draped in
gauze at first,
face down,
for easier entry of student blades
into the
backs of those they'll love
before the
whole thing's over. What begins
as terror
cloaked in banter, ends in gratitude,
the intimate
gift of the open body.
You tell how you'll return the favor at death,
your body a
lesson beneath somebody's pry.
Your hand
below my shoulder blade
you trace a
right angle: the first cut,
you say, a
flap of the skin's tenting
into the
human soliloquy.
2
Cadavers are oily to touch,
the flesh
resembling Italian beef.
Once you left the lab for lunch
and ordered a
sandwich;
formaldehyde
stench on your hands,
the beef damp
and gray -- you couldn't choke it down.
Each day at
the lab you wore the same clothes,
stink so
persistent you torched them at year's end.
You joke, you'll tattoo your chest NO CODE,
and on your
back a dotted line, CUT HERE.
3
Here, for the skin of your back, a tattoo, an indigo
bio-script wreathed in trumpet vine:
I treated the
poor and the old,
sat at
the silent deathbeds
of
penniless women,
listened to ancient men
exhume
childhood grief.
Taught my
daughter
to
drive in bad weather.
Grew
orchids, shot targets, made lists, stacked books,
I
hated to be interrupted.
I was
a good kisser.
I once looked
into a patient's throat.
Surprised at what grew there I said, Oh shit.
Dear
Reader, I'm your text now,
your
legend, cover to cover.
4
When the head is at last unwrapped from its gauze
and the face
appears, the skull waits for the saw.
But worse
than the face, you say, the hand,
that cut a
shard from the ball of a foot,
or poured
cheap vodka down;
its fingers
curled around a thigh
or fisted in
rage. The corporeal totem
of the hand,
angelic, monstrous.
If not proof
the body cages the Soul,
then proof
the Body's obstinate grist will do.
5
So they will search you,
muscle,
nerve, artery, ligament, bone,
not knowing
how you
slept beneath
these three thin blankets,
your hand at
the base of my head,
my hand at
your spine's low arcing,
how we drowsed, dream-moving
to the
ceiling fan's whir,
Death at the
window on its dogged watch,
beneath my hand
your blood
and breath counting you down.
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