The Best of the Body

for Robyn

1. Spleen

It is highly vascular, that is

to say gifted; of the superior range

and more, no one is smart enough

to test its limits. No one

is God; God is not God.

The spleen is at the cardiac end

of the stomach, a fine neighborhood

patrolled by lymphocytes, white or colorless

nucleate cells that maintain immunity

to infection and resistance against bacteria

and other foreign entities except euphemisms.

O marvelous reservoir of blood,

red collection so gaudy it is fetish.

Worn-out erythrocytes the spleen destroys

and therefore eventually all the household

cells that submit to local drudgery, the carrying

of oxygen and hemoglobin they can’t keep, and that’s

how you get black bile, the melancholy next to mirth.

2. Liver

This is all the advice M_______ could manage

when they came for Ethyl:

Don’t hold it in your hand for it could be

drunk and not responsible and using that cover.

Beware the liver fluke, it is nothing but mistake,

nothing but parasite. Remember that the liver

does everything in the name of metabolism,

everything it does for Bolsheviks, for Nazis

and punks.

You will still be Ethyl when they call you C2H5OH

and send you to the liver. Do not be easy; you

owe that to womanhood, so wreck what you can.

To think that the first time you leave home

it’s a little trip to the system.

Darling Ethyl, readiness has never mattered.

3. Heart-to-heart Talk

—Have a heart and a nice day.

—Thank you. I have put the heart

in my mouth; is that the right place?

—Here; how about a change of heart?

—No; I haven’t quite finished this one

on my sleeve.

—So it’s that way, is it? I suspect

you're after my own heart.

—Oh no; you know I don’t have the heart

to do that. You know me by heart; remember?

Please believe me; I’m swearing with all my heart.

—Really? Well, I believe that came from

the bottom of your heart, close to the dregs,

the liver and spleen, not the creamy brain.

Source: Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1993)