a scientist ruminates on the brutality of her research methods and the urgency of her motivation- to save someone she loves from dying- before succumbing herself 

BRUTE

I Catch Myself (terminal)

I can’t think without hovering

but today, shaking makes my hovering

an effort of thought and there

is no more room for words

I can’t walk without an open mouth

or control your looking

so I stay closed, breath heavy

I can’t relax away a bone pain

or keep steady

I cannot be lifted

I used to ask

I just want to change my face

In The Fallout (an explanation)

her altered cells

unrepaired

I remember

poor swimmers stay in

the sargassum weed

think about

the floating worlds

where eponymous

protected

eat their own

how at least

they needed meat

while her body is garbage

like the ocean and

I wonder

if the sargassum fish

will survive

The Rabbit (a lecture)

his wife told him

not to leave the picture up

for too long

the rabbit’s eye

bloodied from what they did

and undid

is a planet in black

and ours in space

is not a bloodied eye

what difference does it make?

it heals itself

and rabbits die and die

on their own

and by our hands

hands that would make us planets

not rabbits

Animal Testing (significant others)

these experiments keep time

but not to a ritual

this is not shared

the subject’s bodily knowing

is my intellect

No- I do not wonder who cared for him before now

I do not remember the way you hold our cat

I am turning from your eyes

because they are dying

even in memories

I will break the bones of anything

learning how to freeze you

No- you would not say

“the fact of healing does not erase an injury’s occurrence in time”

don’t you see, there is no time!

Operation (funeral for a part)

the sensation of pain

my heart telling me

all these years

to keep in it

the blood in my arms and fingers and legs

keeping it there

behind my teeth

it knew to ask

Acute Mountain Sickness (the hair, the straw, the feather)

when I was willing to suffer the mountains

I swelled and saw

the planets blackened

and to her side, on the desk

small, and indirect

a mouse was dragging its hind legs

because he could not move them

Good Intentions (terminal)

meanwhile

people in Florida

are rescuing tortoises

by returning them to rivers

they have never lived in

where they cannot breathe