← v14n1, Spring 2015
Poetry · Volume 14, Number 1

I Saw Everything

Ontogeny recapitulates the photos in the book of dissections

I saw everything in detail

I stood on my footprints and watched the pages show muscle

and clouds of alveoli

ragged heels like red salmon in the last stages

skin hanging in shreds

Names were fading from so much touching

Paper showed through bone white

Till then I had not been given enough information

Now I saw it was not so different

There was great tenderness and then bodies lined the shallows