Plasticize Me
My sweetie flinched to hear me say I’d give
my body to a med school, teaching tool
for cutting open, even welcome how
they’d saw my skull apart, expose my brain.
Forced to admit the flame or burial
was small improvement, she--just having seen
Bodyworlds--offered plasticizing as
a compromise, and I was quick to agree,
delighting at the possibilities
of poses for my stripped-to-basics self
and looking forward to the chance to stay
in frozen action past my exit line.
Should I be runner, arms pumping, legs bent?
Or the opposite: reader, sprawled in a chair?
I could be spread-legged and beating my chest
in the bedroom, Tarzan, mouthing a silent whoop.
Maybe a lawn ornament, on one leg, pink
flamingo updated. The foyer’s coat- and hatrack,
fingers splayed invitingly? Or, a dish
in bony hands, the usual servant at the sink.
But then I realized only one pose would do:
me in some corner of the house hunched over
a piece of paper, caught in mid-scribble, mid-scratch,
a real, unplasticized pen my link to the world,
just like now, this flesh surrounding me all
misdirection, coverup, a little Buddhist dew.
Ok, she said, but do you mind if I set you
out in the garage, no slight intended, of course,
but only a way of saying as I rev
my engine hot to gad about that poetry’s
meant not to be some still shrine where pilgrims
come, remove their shoes, and bow, but rather--
souped up rod or trim sedan or limo--
a vehicle for getting to and fro?
Philip Dacey
New York, New York
This issue
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