Wednesday, May 9, 2012

They Will Take My Island

by David Brock



They will open my abdomen, decode my genus by liver tissue, intrude dark and click a stick that looks like a pen for
notes in sharp grey scrawl on plated silver tablets: 


/--/`/`-`//`        (We were wrong. These are not machines.)
/--\|\|=---         (We have incised the mass from its chest,)
-/\\ -|- //-         (and curious, its island beats.) 

They are years away from understanding the science in our parts.
I beg for tendons, my spleen, my lymph juice. It’s not too late. 

One grabs my tongue, examines that landscape. One sketches 
my shapes. Another, sadly it seems, records the misguided data: 

-||-- /// -|- ||      (... strange sounds escape from the ocean on its face...)
-- ||||__|           (...I wonder if it knows what we are.)
|\\\----_--\|       (If only we could reach it, we could know if this next procedure hurts.)