Something in the way you people smell, like you've got no soul at all.

I wrote a revision about one of my poems on this blog from two years ago for my creative writing class, and it brought my professor to tears.

The Process (3/9/09)

“Baby fat doesn’t smell like adult fat.”
You would expect it to be easier to autopsy an adult
than a child. We flip the tiny cadaver’s scalp up,
and then I can pretend I am dissecting a cat, AP-bio style.

You don’t need the bone saw on children.
Using the scalpel, we cut the cartilaginous ribs one-by-one,
and easily remove the breastplate.
The organs are miniature, and even cute.

I’ve never seen a heart so small and so precious.
I only think it’s sad that it will never see CAD.
I wonder what this child could have done or seen
with its life, now wasted by asphyxiation.

Tongue-tied and Oh, So Squeamish

Formaldehyde shields so perfectly the pungency of the scent of death
I don't how how one can get used to it
So used to it that one can detach from a person being real
Slicing brains and hearts like slicing bread with a thick butcher's knife

Entering the room, looking around, eyes wide
like I walked in onto the set of a horror film
featuring corrupt doctors harvesting black market organs
for a quick buck

They may not be corrupt,
but they are desensitized.
Do I blame them,
having to chop up bodies everyday?

Using a bone saw like a dentist with his drill
Going back to make sure the ribs can pop off easily enough
like one looking to clean out a cavity.

They don't have to care about the brain and it's integrity when
they have to get through a half inch thick skull
They get bored when they only have 8 autopsies in a day
Bring on 20
it is as meanial to them as shelving books.

Images revisit my brain on the long drive home
of pools of blood
those left inside the body cavity
duodenal fluid leaking into the cavity
mixing with the blood
curdling
I move, can't see this

I hate running the bowel......