For JSKAH!
Harvester
At work: dead on the table.
The cat’s busy heart halved,
then flattened. Taking up
a pair of instruments, I practiced
embroidery on his opened belly.
Here we are not journeying
through a dream, though the unconscious
browses as if at market.
Lying taut atop the organs are ruddy strips of muscle
And clouding over, weather systems of fat.
Here are inroads I made through them with purple thread.
Here I practice my slip stitch on the skin layer:
A blithe puppeteer’s tug at line
and two sheaves of flesh cleave.
Dreaming: while he sleeps on a cotton lozenge
next to my throbbing skull I resculpt my cat
from the clay I made of him.
Here I am, stooped over a steel tub
In which, methodical and absolute,
I push him under by the scruff. I watch
for a struggle but he makes none.
Now the dreamer enters the dream.
Look at me:
Here is the calculated gleam of a harvester,
O won’t this be a great experiment to feed his limp body
Through a die-cast hopper
And of the white meal he made, I sculpted
another of him, and even awake I can
admire what a perfect likeness it was–
what the self, tilted from guilt, can fashion
from bodies living and dead.
jskah said,
November 25, 2008 at 8:33 pm
oh man. disturbing, in such a good way. & it seems finished??
A. said,
November 25, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I like this a lot, FWIW. The last line resonates.
jskah said,
November 26, 2008 at 3:30 pm
hey dude some weird thing has happened where i don’t see any of the fancy html action on yr page – is this just my work computer, or is this a server problem, or…? (i don’t really know what “server problem” would mean, it just sounds appropriately deadly..)
unreliable narrator said,
November 28, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Yes.
unreliable narrator said,
November 28, 2008 at 6:13 pm
NB that I am preparing to swipe a great swath of freshly cropped Miss B. for Friday Refrains unless she forcibly stops me.
anatomyofadress said,
November 29, 2008 at 4:29 am
Steal away! XO
d said,
November 30, 2008 at 2:12 am
awesome re-do. Yes.