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Dissection

a triplet poem

I'm sitting here, scalpel in hand,
wondering what I could learn from this pig in my pan.
Tentative, I push up her eyelid and

peer underneath. She stares at me through
a vitreous eye; her pig lips move:
Pig hater. I don't care, I shoot back, if you approve

of this lab. Your mother is sausage and you're
in formaldehyde. Prepare to be cut-no complaining or
squirming around. I gulp. I hadn't noticed before

that she has a few stray hairs on her snout. I know
what you did when you were seven comes slow
and soft from her mouth. What? Oh ...
she means the slaughter on Aunt Libby's farm, when
grown pigs slit from neck to anus hung from chins,
entrails glistening. I was too young then
to be horrified. And now this pig, with chemical stink-
veins true electric blue and arteries shocking pink.
I'm instructed to sever her brown bulging liver, but I don't think

I can. It was so much easier just to look at the chart.
They described the procedure but they left out one part-
this pig's got my stomach, my veins, an~.my heart.

Valerie Kann

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