Past & Future Exhibits at the Mutter Museum

by Kara Dorris

Turn the corner. Glass walls, 
floor to ceiling. 
Inside glass displays,
glass jars. Inside glass jars 
a clear formaldehyde 
(we’ve discovered water is 
decomposition & stores
nothing, too near to the body 
aging). Floating in a center 
that doesn’t hold almost, 

lives suspend. I would have 
never been preserved
as a fetus in a jar, but my fused 
bones with be saved to show 
what can go wrong
with DNA. I was a typical 
baby. The doctors broke 
my finger when I refused

to leave my mother’s womb, 
then sliced my cheek 
when cutting me out.
What all Cassandras don’t want 
to say but maybe I knew: 
they will boil my skin 
until it deserts 
bones, drive in pins

& wires to string my body 
from ceilings or metal 
rolling racks. Imagine 
a whole room of skeletons
with tumors like mine,
from least to worst. My future 
if I donate my body to science. 

Where is the place where all bodies 
are exquisite, where those of us 
who have been dissected 
& charted can feel communion. 

The girl who vacationed at
doctors’ offices. The girl 
who starred as a pinup
in her orthopedic surgeon’s 
conference presentation.  

The girl with tumors 
everywhere but her vagina 
& the OB-GYN who brought in
a friend to stare at her ankles, 
two men standing between 
her legs murmuring how strange

,