English 101 - Writing about Biology

Professor Lauren Kiefer

English Department

Champlain Valley Hall

Am I then to understand

that with every matins' sociable embalming of the armpit

molecular aluminum insinuates itself, through sheared follicles,

bright fleck by bright fleck, into the tiny tender kinks

of capillaries? slides along their permeable wisps

into the jostling rivers of depleted scarlet doughnuts and white ghosts,

into a hectic Amazon, through endlessly wrung chambers,

out the roaring wide aorta, rising blandly through the neck

by ever subtler pulses toward the tingling gray curd

all flushed with its matted electrical storms? and lays

a glinting finger on one sparked synaptic mouth

that hushes. Whose voice may never be missed.

A number, a name, the Latin for greed,

clopping upstairs that March day in Florence with brand-new clogs,

the blister they raised. But supposing senility

takes the brain in its soft retriever's mouth

and carries it to be gutted, supposing all

the recent layers plucked away and memory's microscopic doors flung wide

for the oldest to come forth: Would third-grade Ruth be missing

and unmissed, or Mary or Brenda, with random trivial comrades,

or would the whole host stagger out, one missing legs, another clothes,

with synthetic pearls for eyes or carrot noses?

Or would each corridor dead-end on a scaly tinfoil mirror

showing nothing but the scowling smear

of some old unfamiliar woman's face?

This page was last updated on 05/27/2004 .

Questions about this site? Please contact Dr. Lauren Kiefer.