Anatomy of the Grotesque
       

One cannot separate flesh from burn—
this thing we call woman wilts under your tongue.
A steel-toothed gear as mouth concept,

as dirty allegory. Some designs triangulate
around well-dressed meat, porcelain gypsies,
undressed stomachs and celebrity cameos

in sci-fi flicks with nonlinear narratives
and Dutch angles; oddly-lit and dim-green
with magnetic gloom clouds and sizzling guns.

Pink-shellacked bodies, transparent segments
revealing miniature sparrow-lungs, flowering
kidneys wired to their lower ribs. They might

be spherical, pregnant with electric-blue babies
and superfluous hands wriggling in gel the color
of bloodless plasma. This is a beautiful horror.

Copyright © 2010 Susan Slaviero All rights reserved
from Cyborgia
Mayapple Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission