Second Place Winner, March 2002 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Second Place Winner, March 2002

AUTOPSY
Mike M
(Melic Review Roundtable)

Lay me flat, naked, belly-up on a stainless-steel table.
Remove my watch, jewelry, place them in a rubber box.
Now raise my head by placing a wooden block
beneath my head. Take the surgeon's stryker saw,
be careful not to cut your fingers as ear to ear
you make a scalp incision. Get hammer and chisel,
tap, tap, tap around the skull, pull my cap.
Gently take out my brain, examine it for lesions,
bruises, all the thoughts I carried of you.
Somewhere hidden is a snowy Vermont,
hemlock and spruce, a honeymoon on skis.
Log your findings, move on to my eyes,
examine them closely in their sockets,
or take them out. Dulled to no reflection,
still they stare only in your direction.
Open my mouth and look at my tongue--
Can you remember its truths, its lies?
The many, many times it wet your skin?
Keep going because I can no longer speak.
Pick up a clean scalpel, begin with an incision
of the left shoulder, descend, pass under
the nipples and ascend to the right shoulder.
Pull the cutaneous piece upward and back,
now make a medium incision from the margin
of the previous cut down to the pubic region.
Cut through muscle, expose my ribs,
ignore my body's shaking as you separate bone,
plunge your hands into my thoracic cavity
where you gather my heart. Press your fingertips
on its four chambers, each a house of love
and anger, remorse, inexhaustible desire
until now when all the livid blood is stilled.
Record some notes, move quietly down
the abdomen, touch the flaccid penis,
the shriveled testicles. Recall our daring
energies when we were young,
slow murmurs of pleasure, our children.
Now wipe your forehead and ask yourself,
is such dissection still the man you love?
If so, piece me together, stitch me tight,
take me home, put this thing to rest.