The Bodyworlds Exhibit

by Elizabeth Hamilton

The visit to the warehouse begins with a female cadaver
skinned to the bones and elongated, suspended
intact from the ceiling by wires.
She greets mourners with a martini glass,
an amusing cocktail to numb a single file line,
and each patron's need to murmur in her ear.
The tour ends, abruptly, with new life
in the womb but the woman dead
on a bed, shown as a seductive lover lounging,
hips sprung, legs coiled. Her belly
bursting ripe, the skin peeled
open, revealing syrupy fruit,
a baby girl. I wish the mother
could somehow nurse her child even
from beneath some layer of earth.
But that seems impossible, when
between the beginning and end, I saw her
two breasts, hardened flesh
and nipples, on display in a glass case.
Body parts -- fresh spheres, snatched
from the limbs by a notorious hand,
sliced across the top to expose pasty cancer
worms, and the rotting nectar.
When I stood in front of that exhibit,
I fixated on her plastinated flesh
and my body parts too, were stolen
by cancer, turned to worms, turned to plastic,
turned immovable.