Blackbird Archive← v13n2, Fall 2014Poetry · Volume 13, Number 2
from Dear Herculine
{ A LETTER WITHIN A LETTER CONCERNING THE CHESTNUT-LIKE GONADS
Dear Herculine,
Small lovable cells that spread thick, slime butter.
A nut lard that vibrates, a dark fruit.
Kill the thing, cut open the dead, get at its essence.
Cut and biopsy the autopsy, declare the gender.
Essence as if sex could be defined by a few cells in a profuse smear.
With deathlife the rhetoric of gender is always complicated, messy.
With deathlife even the opened, dissected body is confused.
With deathlife hermaphroditism contorts outwards in a cell flood.
}
