Monday 20 February 2017

Donation

by Sarah Henry


I would like to donate
my body to science
with a flourish.
My long-awaited dissection
must be written off
to good will.

A medical student soon
learns that organs in a cadaver
don’t mirror each other
like two halves of a French
door opening in the salon
of a wealthy art collector.
Let me invite you inside
with pleasure, and hope
you won’t send regrets.
He who hesitates is lost.

Anatomy class is tough,
but not so bad as reading
pediatric electrocardiograms
with their many dark 
and murmuring hearts.

My driver’s license says,
An eye for an eye.
When my car collides with
a distracted station wagon,
a student will butterfly
my body, taking everything,
the uneven and misaligned,
all askew. His scalpel will
rob my grave.

* * * * *

Sarah Henry is a former student of Robert Hass and Louise Gluck at the University of Virginia. Today she lives near Pittsburgh, where her poems have appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. and the Pittsburgh Poetry Review. Farther afield, Sarah's work has been published in the International Women's Day issue of the Camel Saloon, The Hollins Critic and six anthologies. CHEAP POP featured her humorous prose. Humor is very important to her.


No comments:

Post a Comment