You slept
like a shaggy bison,
so I sized up your carcass
and random limbs,
ran an eye down
your cartilaginous spine.
I guessed at your waist
— where basin capsized
in a plexus
of unpronounceable bones.
At your shoulder,
I slalomed two fingers
down your side,
scaled a spade-shaped rump,
and grappled with
flimsy, triangular feet.
I sifted through
blood and cell palisades
under the skin,
raced corpuscles
in your arteries,
crammed bronchial sacs
into the lungs,
slid the liver into its slot.
I wedged the heart
below the sternum
in a cobweb of meat,
and even found a spot
for the adenoids.
However, I did have to pry
the gall bladder loose,
and the pancreas,
like the ileum,
was never sorted out.
Then I refereed
your cells’ mitosis,
and the ack-ack-ack-ack
of your synapses firing.
At last, I snapped your chromosomes
like a set of reins,
carved my initials on your DNA,
short-circuited your electrolytes,
and marinated your body
in a beaker of night.
This poem first appeared in Jaguar of Sweet Laughter (Random House, 1991).
—
Diane Ackerman’s twenty-six books include bestsellers The Zookeeper’s Wife, A Natural History of the Senses, and The Human Age. Among her honors: the John Burroughs Medal, P.E.N. Thoreau Award, Stephen Hawking Medal, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and celebration as a Literary Lion by the NY Public Library. One of her books became a feature film, and another a PBS NOVA series. A molecule was named after her, dianeackerone, a pheromone in pygmy crocodiles.
