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.