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
- Robert Burns: To Miss Ferrier: Enclosing the Elegy on Sir J. H. Blair.
- Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity poem – John Milton poems
- Василий Казин – Ну, тебя ль, далекая
- Editorial Impressions by Siegfried Sassoon
- For A Picture Of St. Dorothea poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Night Song At Amalfi by Sara Teasdale
- Олег Бундур – Всё живёт
- Childhood by William Barnes
- The Lads in Their Hundreds poem – A. E. Housman
- Dedication To Malcolm Nicolson
- Sonnet XV. On The Grasshopper And Cricket poem – John Keats poems
- Karazah Karl
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Недолго
- How to Write Creative Non-fiction
- Felo de Se poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
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).
