Here I am again in the October room
with four boys & a keg
of formaldehyde. Silver tools line up
outside the door. Our professor says,
Let the dissection begin,
but now it’s my turn to pith
the confederate scul-
pture at Park & Grove, splay
columns & corridors
& gently fold back the uni-
varsity walls, which
will resist at first
(windows may twitch
even when closed)
but I’ll glide sharp
laughter through the atri-
um & when our professor says,
You must be confused,
I’ll continue with steady hand
through narrow condu-
its & arterial ducts, until,
woozy from the scent
of too many Saturdays,
I release the wet red fist
of my own furious heart,
which I will place with care
on a sterile aluminum tray.
Jackie Craven is the author of Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press, Fall 2018) and a chapbook, Our Lives Became Unmanageable (Omnidawn, 2016), winner of the publisher’s Fabulist Fiction award. Her poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, New Ohio Review, River Styx, Poets Reading the News, Spillway, and elsewhere. She lives in Schenectady, NY and Cocoa Beach, FL but spends most of her time online.
