A PRIMER FOR BOTANICAL AUTOPSY
When the wind has unwebbed, the barnside travesties may begin.
Dress the part & remain firm in your belief that a vital spring will go slack & you
won't be able to latch her inside of you, though someone somewhere will be trying
to sell a loosened sole on the idea.
Sit the visiting bereaved on stumps, within the theater, but at a distance amenable to
the disturbances of doctors, interns. Consider that galloned views are easier to
market in fashionable quarters. Blow them out to stark.
*
*
Open along her glossy-leaved (left) side. The
verdant tearing without stakes.
*
*
Philodendron the spectators' songs along the leaning window's frame. The mullions
branching into solemn cathedral points will clear your head.
*
*
Record your findings geographically. City
plants remnant in oxygen deep in the bones.
Diffenbachia, likely 1999. Fossilized herbitage,
city-green (yellow with fumes) the meat, the
betrayer. What she radiated, walked pointedly
& ordered. A thin layer at the outside, speckled
wildflower.
*
*
Having once wanted to be a lawyer & accuse people of crimes of omission, respect
the impulse to absent, to subtle, to leave hidden hardy alone.
*
*
Observe the change in exposed cross-
sections. What of letters, paper-soft & blurred blue?
The residue of postage stamp & envelope lick? The
wrist bent so often, the hair tucked in mannered
agitation? Will we find such crinkled evidence amidst
other marrow?
*
*
Feel the empty preserving fluid bottles in clumsy rolling clinks. Dance under scrubs.
The sky will threaten to postpone further examination until tomorrow & scurry the
interns, with instruments, from altar to cabinet.
*
*
Set the bone-stutters in velvet-lined boxes
above index card explanations of origin,
destination.
*
*
Return to the operation grounds, the learning stand, early the next morning, before
the sun moves up from behind the trees, newly ordered by the chief pathologist.
*
*
With string, secure the visitors' suspicions that
the operators are simulacra of the very bodies
they examine. Money will follow, for everyone
loves a tribute to her deceased. & one so
fitting!
*
*
Shudder as the animals, slowed to tail, push out their sounds.