Evan J. Peterson

My body museum, haunted by its own curiosities,
     a cabinet of wonders: tumescent chest,
     a cavity of breakthroughs, bursting;

this torso, cage of ribs, the bird inside grown wan
     since the clipping, stuffed now with batting,
     displayed like the Ashmole dodo,

the double heart, bifid, squishing, a wounded
     gypsy moth pumping asymmetrical wings,
     the halves joined not by love but wire;

that abdomen, distended by marvels, organs in pairs,
     trios, like the shared trunk of joined twins,
     straining the stitches to hold it all in;

three children’s livers, pristine, unmarked by absinthe,
     unscoured by laudanum, three milk-fed
     miracles, straining poisons from this well;

the extra pancreas, spleens, three kidneys,
     the small intestine shortened to make room
     and allow for quick excretion;

this auxiliary breast, fat lurker beneath the pectoral,
     supernumerary nipple, hot as a witch’s tit
     in a copper brazier, to suckle infernal familiars;

an extra lung, sponge for oxygen, drawing plenty,
     fuel for the flames at the core, goblin forge,
     a forest fire struck by one lucky bolt of light;

this skull inscribed, Hebrew scratched on the inside,
     illuminated by the flash: ת מ א , Emet, Truth,
     to crack open and rub off one glyph for Death;

the brain in its cradle, swollen, backed up to the wall,
     the caul pinched together, cauterized, a barrier
     between tissue and fluid, envelope of genius;

my whole form a jar of captured lightning, ultraviolet,
     the nerves like taut wires, reinforced,
     snapping the seven feet from brain to heels–

here is my body, my rarae aves, my cartography.
     Here is my Terra Incognita. Here,
     there be monsters.

Posted 06/27/10

from my as yet unpublished manuscript, The Cutting Room Floor. Previously published in another form in Studies in the Fantastic.