Autopsy

Lay my naked body, belly-up on a stainless-steel table.
Place my watch and wedding ring inside a rubber box.
Now raise my head by placing a wooden block
beneath it. Take the surgeon’s Stryker saw;
ear to ear make a scalp incision. Be careful
not to cut your fingers. Get hammer and chisel,
tap, tap, tap around the skull, pull my cap.
Gently remove my brain, examine it for lesions,
bruises, thoughts of you. Somewhere
is a snowy Vermont with hemlock filled woods,
our mountain honeymoon, laughter on skis.
Log your findings, move on to my eyes,
closely examine them in their sockets,
take them out. They offer no reflection,
yet still they stare only in your direction.
Open my mouth, look at my tongue.
Can you remember its truths, its lies?
The many, many times it wet your skin?
Keep going because I can no longer speak.
Pick up a clean scalpel, begin with an incision
on the left shoulder, descend, pass under
the nipples, ascend to the right shoulder.
Pull the cutanous piece upward and back,
make a medium incision from the margin
of the previous cut down to the pubic region.
Cut through muscle, expose my ribs,
ignore my body’s shaking as you separate bone,
and plunge your hands into my thoracic cavity
where you take hold of my heart. Press your fingertips
on its four chambers, each a house of love
and anger, remorse, inexhaustible desire
until now when all the livid blood is stilled.
Record some notes, move quietly down
the abdomen, touch the flaccid penis,
the shriveled testicles. Recall our daring
energies when we were young,
slow murmurs of pleasure, our children.
Now wipe your forehead and ask yourself,
is such dissection still the man you love?
If so, piece me together, stitch me tight,
take me home, or put this thing to rest.

*Michael P. McManus has published his poems in numerous publications including like Atlanta Review, Rhino, Texas Review, Louisiana Literature, Wind, Rattle, ONTHEBUS, Prism International, Poems & Plays, Midwest Quarterly, Comstock Review, Square Lake, Burnside Review, among others. His short stories have appeared in places like Contrary Magazine, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Gator Springs Gazette, Lichen Literary Journal, Dublin Quarterly, among others. He is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts.