Jeff Calhoun
Watching My Own Autopsy
I’m stripped like a pale mannequin.
A scalpel drops and my skin peels
as if this was high school biology.
But I don’t drip formaldehyde
into a gray bin, preservative
for something that never lived.
The coroner is talking about snow
collecting as drifts in his grandfather’s brain,
the scar tissue on an uncle’s liver.
She mouths ‘sclerosis’.
The myelin coating my nerves degraded.
I cured every disease but my own.
Jeff Calhoun’s writing credits include Mannequin Envy, Mimesis, Blood Orange Review, Stirring, 2River, and Triplopia. His second digital chapbook, How to Make Yourself a Small Target was joint-winner of the 2008 Mimesis Chapbook Initiative.
Page(s) 31
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