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Alisa
Gordaneer
- First Place Winner of The Poems
Niederngasse 50 US Dollar Cash Poetry Contest
...featured in the July 2005 Niederngasse
Print Issue
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alisa gordaneer
dissecting
grace
she calls you grace, whispers your name the first day,
the chill growing on your body like september air.
she places scalpel, forceps, notebook.
tight-lipped, sets to work. notes your age, cause of death
then maps your waxy skin, lists
each mole and birthmark, every crease.
your nails, still painted tender pink, hair dyed. details
anyone could see
but she
is the first to go inside you, scalpel slicing skin, muscle, fat
rivers of veins, organs lifted and held:
liver, spleen, scarred uterus, ovaries. the way they fit neatly
among the comic lengths of intestine.
it is december before she finds her way
into your heart.
and then, between artery and vessel, scalpel and notebook
she can trust you, your ear
open like that (malleus, incus, stapes).
talks about her grandmother’s cancer, her
boyfriend’s
transgressions, her grades
how she’s thinking of smoking
to deal with the stress,
until she opens your lungs
and changes her mind
you’re a good listener, she says. a good friend
your kind heart, though still. a good brain.
she recites cerebellum, anterior lobe, frontal lobe, pituitary
the intimate places of aorta and ventricle
by april, she knows everything about you, grace,
but
how that tongue (muscle, glands) shaped language,
the way your eyes (retina, iris, lens) glanced
who your arms (sinew, bone, skin)
embraced.
| Alisa Gordaneer
lives and writes in Victoria, B.C., Canada. She is the editor of Monday Magazine,
Victoria’s alternative newsweekly, and is working on a novel,
a poetry
collection, and a collection of essays. Her previous publications are
in a variety of periodicals and anthologies, including Three-Ring Circus; Women
Who Eat, and Breeder (all
from Seal Press). email: A.Gordaneer |
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