Catherine Gilley | + Follow Poet |
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Cadaver Elegy

They handed me the scalpel like a crown- 
Queenship of the pail and prostrate.
I ascended my throne of sterile steel,
The body laid bare, my unwilling courtier. 
Death they said was merely a textbook.
I nodded, pencil poised, as though it were true.
The first incision felt too intimate,
A betrayal of secrets not mine to expose.
The nurse called her "Donner" as though she were a beneficiary of grim philanthropy.
I prefer to call her Margret, or Jane.  
I learned quickly: the heart is plump, the lungs bellows, and the brain tangled power grid.
But these metaphors grew thin, 
An overused blanket full of moth-bitten truths. 
what they didn't teach was that DEATH was an artist. 
Death paints in shades of beige and bruise, 
His brushstrokes subtle, almost apologetic.
"Here" he murmurs, "Is the poetry of ending" 
And leaves you to recite in your own time.
I recite with my gloves on, 
A litany of Latin and cold detachment.
I begin to see him, everywhere.
In the brittle frailty of bones under fluorescents, 
In the hallow echoes of a stethoscope.
He lingered like the smell of formaldehyde,
Clinging to my clothes, my thoughts, my sleep.
I dreamed once of her- Margret, or Jane.
She sat up, stitched together.
Smiling as though death were nothing more than an inconvenience, like missing the bus.
"you'll get use to him," she said 
As though we were discussing a tiresome colleague.
And maybe I am.
I've started leaving my scalpel in my locker,
As though it too might learn ambivalence.
I wonder if this is what they meant by "clinical"
To see death as a coworker
Instead of a tyrant - or worse, a friend.
But Margret, or Jane, never tells me 
Whether she minds my hesitation.
her silence is my syllabus, 
Her body my bittersweet credential.

Copyright © Catherine Gilley | Year Posted 2024

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