Kimberly Gibson-Tran​

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 life is merely to ovum and sperm and where those two meet 

   and how often and how well and what dies there. 

— from “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs”  

 

 

here we are again dissecting life 

after bullets. this time the life of a poet, and this poem is 

what i am doing with my life today. already merely 

yesterday's news. how many tomorrows? 4 AM i drove to 

IHOP because it was open, stared at the splattered ovum 

i ordered sunny side up in its piddle of yellow and 

remembered biology, how when i learned the term sperm 

i was already familiar with flagellation. i am a christian and 

my religion is made by violence. i am supposed to know where 

i’m going. turns out it’s hard, writing toward an end, those 

sinews threading like they did inside my formaldehyde pig two 

decades ago in high school. perhaps our hands meet 

at the breastbone, cross at the cross-section, and 

our faces contort in the altar’s black gloss, knowing how 

many mistakes we will make on our body, how often 

we will bend away sick, slick-gloved and 

wishing we were somewhere else, questioning our futures. how 

can it be, this pink-drained thing, the endless well 

of it? the smell’s afterlife permeating lunch and history and 

civics, and all of it we have to return to tomorrow is what 

we will be thinking. if this story ever dies, 

when time dissolves our mangled art—even, yes, partner, there.

 

 

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