an excerpt of
Cadaver, Speak
The body—before they opened me—the darkest dark
must live in there. Where color is wasted.
Because I hear them look:
bright green of gallbladder, shocked yellow fat, acreage
flat out under skin. To think I brought this
on myself.
No blood in the lab. No longer
my blood, paste flaking
brown to the touch, the heart packed with it.
They do that too.
Let it pass, my husband said, for years.
But you know what? It’s more, it’s how
there is no sleep. It’s how words
come apart in a dream.
And then you’re awake.
Pale nerve, bluest black veins. Muscle gone gray
but still pink in places,
fanned out or narrowed, tendon-strict,
white elastic to knob of femur,
humerus. How on earth
to tell this. That they see things hardly
anyone . . . things buried, doing
for a lifetime. Sunken
bonehouse—what body, my slow mineral ruin.
Darkness at the start—it sticks,
it bothers me: why any color at all?
Room of echo and stink. The silence we contain, we
cadavers now, water
that dumb and overflowing.
Blessed those—
too young to be stricken. They’re kids,
in their twenties. They stare, they keep probing. To idle
amazement, to trespass like that.
Is it brave? What’s brave? You know
then you unknow. My God, how they walk into this place
to begin with—all the ways in the smart ones, this
must burn
right through them:
Pure Spirit, stupid me good, just to stand here.
____
1.
Unique. But each the same.
They strip for this drape out of
jeans and those T-shirts,
ready, this fit-for-sacrifice.
Blue scrubs given first: pants
cleaver-cut quick, sewn wide,
a shirt over the head by way
of its V, the belt
a length of cord pulled up and held.
They tie it
like my daughters tied shoes,
looking down and so serious.
First a loop, only to circle
and pass that through slow
as if to practice
practice
how time is made. I remember
minute circles minute, seconds
slip off
and tighten.
White lab coat torn at the pocket.
White lab coat, a button gone missing.
White lab coat, white lab coat repeat repeat,
a refrain, months, weeks of
white lab coat bleached over and over to
human, faint stain at the cuff.
2.
Silver faucets to the wall. And light from no window.
Four tables broad enough, slick shine enough for us
to be turned, to come apart one muscle, one intricate webwork at a time.
That whirl, a machine that tries and tries and cannot—no, the air isn’t sweet.
A plastic tub with its label spinal cords.
Two three four empty ones already marked brains.
Drawers with their hammer chisel
rope handsaw
Virchow skull breaker—
Fluorescent little ice cubes up there, bright basement room.
Boxes and boxes of purple rubber gloves,
cool, insistent as shadow.
3.
And once upon our time: we were two women,
two men. Heart or lungs did us in
old—me the most, my ninety-nine years. Here in the lab
they’re told that. So do I
win something? Me, third in line
on these tables. Only before they cut, they imagine
we imagined them
imagining us as we made this offering
for all humankind, one of those
hero movies, our signing the paper,
desk of black wood and chrome until
who-was-that?—stranger or niece or grandson—the call
from hospital. Or kitchen, so much closer,
more urgent,
terrible, my daughter’s half sandwich
left to a plate.
Post-yes: we drifted there, spring
and all summer
sunk in glycerin, ethyl alcohol, whichever
evil chemical. I forget.
It read like a recipe for Boil-O at Christmas,
but that’s sugary and thick, each steamy cup,
cinnamon in it. Cloves. The new year.
He must have been a farmer, some
med student said. Why? Because he’s
a big guy?—the second of us
laid out here, huge.
The quiet one, not really
in the class, who puts a caption on every
little thing, called him the cadaver pinup, the
cadaver hunk, so sure she was funny.
In fact they’re in awe of his hands—even she is—
the massive chest, the whole works, his
smallest nerve, muscle,
almost an Oldenburg, she said, perfect vast
exaggeration, to be set in caps.
Like you know what a farmer looks like.
Someone else said that . . .
