Entering the Body
by Michelle Bonczek Evory
Entering the Body
after Gunter von Hagen’s Body Worlds
All I could think of at first
was cooking. Of that skinned
rabbit in my freezer, fur torn, gaze
jammed between a package of phyllo
and a carton of ice cream.
Of all that succulent meat
dripping from its own skeleton,
sweet marrow and a bottle of merlot, but
even here
I end up in the palace of longing.
Caught in the arms of no arms.
Trying to bend a body
to my own. A skeleton
follows its muscled canvas
and I long
to be inside one, to hold
the other.
But you can’t translate flesh.
Not with polymer, nor contemplation,
not even with a prolonged hand
shake or make out session.
Not in the slow unbuttoning
of a wine-stained blouse or in the stripping
of tendon from bone, muscle filleted
into C-section, pelvis cavity unsewn.
In this case, a uterus
the size of a thumb. Inside me, one jabs
like an eyelash in the heavens (yes,
the heavens). Here in this museum,
two blue eyes drift from two halves
of a severed head. How long do we stare
into mirrors. So long, I know,
my eyes roll
from their pockets till they bump
my tiny
tiny ossicles dripping notes
into my ears, not yet
not yet.
But flesh will not wait.
I want to wrap my arms around this
sculpture’s waist and ask him, anything?
Nuzzle my chin in the meat-cleave
of his shoulder. Play my fingers
over his bones, over his exposed
vertebrae like a vibraphone.
Lick his neck until his brain coral
flowers.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- The Old Lowe House Staten Island
- Lying Down by Robert Desnos
- Sonnet CXXXIX by William Shakespeare
- A Flower Garden At Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire. by William Wordsworth
- Resurgam
- The Old Gumbie Cat by T. S. Eliot
- sea.html
- Вера Полозкова – И пока он вскакивает с кровати
- On The Porch At The Frost Place, Franconia, N. H. by William Matthews
- Los Able Minded Poets Music Review
- Robert Burns: Motto Prefixed To The Author’s First Publication:
- English Poetry. Francis Turner Palgrave. A Churchyard in Oxfordshire. Фрэнсис Тернер Палгрев.
- Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room by William Wordsworth
- Владимир Маяковский – Сказка о красной шапочке
- No Master by William Henry Davies
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
