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.
Kara Dorris is the author of three poetry collections: HitBox (2024) published by Kelsay Books, Have Ruin, Will Travel (2019), and When the Body is a Guardrail (2020) from Finishing Line Press. She has also published five chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared in the anthology Beauty is a Verb (2011), as well as several literary journals, such as Prairie Schooner, Nine Mile, DIAGRAM, Wordgathering, Puerto del Sol, and swamp pink. Recently, she edited the poetry anthology Writing the Self-Elegy: The Past is Not Disappearing Ink ( 2023) with SIU Press. She currently teaches writing at Illinois College. For more information, please visit karadorris.com.