Lara Glenum
When I entered the traumadome
The
Surgeon General wrapped me in a luxurious hairball
& wheeled me around the hallways
Nurse Red Cloud
descended with a host
of cherubim
The doctors all came running to see the new
mammalian emergency
The sterile hallways flooded with cream
When I was admitted
I went wiggity-wack I was newly emergent & out of joint
The doctors were simpering all over themselves
They
emerged from pots of mammalian cream
needles
in their eyelids
When I entered
the dogs began to bay
& The patients used tubes to flood the doctors
with
horse cum &
blackened
all the gurneys with their chomp chomp
But in the ward reserved for Self-Eaters I was severed
from the other animals
My
wooden tongue held in place
by
a leather face strap
Each monster, the Surgeon General
told me, must establish its own agenda
I spread legs
& hooves & veiny nodes & twitching
placenta paste
onto
my toast
Pass the mammal harm
you said
reaching across the table into
my millennial wreckage
&
pulling out
a
bucketful of calf legs
You birthed a big one! you
crooned
draped in rope-like tendons
& a cartilaginous
party hat
The
herd thanks you
for
your compliance!
you squawked from across the room where you
were
looping
blood
sausages like streamers
around the chandelier
but that was nothing
When you sprang out of my cake lobbing
cow brains
I
knew we were done for
The creamery was indeed
closed
The devastating machines
were already groaning
&
pulling the new head
out
of the intestinal casing
of
your face
They injected the stuffed monkey into me
through the puncture point
The shunt in my stomach
They dug it out again
with a hook
& named it Roscoe
Buried it again
then dug the shrunken fetal king out of the
red marshes
Out of the soft bowl of bone
They dressed it in lacy knickerbockers
& worshipped it
Only then did the Captains of Industry
proclaim me
their Òtruest ballerina & heirÓ
destroying my face which was replaced by a
neo-gothic painting
of the archangel
loudly
doodling on his trumpet-shaped cock
playing
it into
a black plastic bag in
which a porcelain uterus swam
under the steam
of its golden
propeller