[Realpoetik] Patricia Lockwood

[RealPoetik Magazine]

*The Pro-Vivisection Poems*

Apes, especially, will not feel a thing, and all fanned out,
will not be measurably less, like whores arrived on other sides
of wormholes minus orange-blossom perfume, split lips,

and half-moon marks in huge-pored peels, minus tall unfeeling
fruit, numb spots along a spine. Earthworms especially,
who have no arms, are happy to have them sliced away;

delimit me, say diamondbacks, and severalize me, say spotted
mice; dogs are glad to see your scalpel, glad to be wiped
clean on your sleeve. Horses are happy to be born half-horse--

near the end they remember almost nothing: how they
survived on scraps, how the air was a stepped and shining
pyramid of fish parts, how it was winter and weedy necks

were happy to be stretched over stumps, when you
appeared to them, mythical, half-seen and half-man.



*Patricia Lockwood*'s poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary,
Chelsea, Many Mountains Moving, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Please find
her at http://emperoroficecreamcakes.blogspot.com.

-- 
RealPoetik
realpoetik.blogspot.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.scn.org/pipermail/realpoetik/attachments/20081226/ef8da95f/attachment.html>