The Best Of The Body

for Robyn

1. Spleen
It is highly vascular, that is
to say gifted; of the superior range
and more, no one is smart enough
to test its limits. No one
is God; God is not God.

The spleen is at the cardiac end
of the stomach, a fine neighborhood
patrolled by lymphocytes, white or colorless
nucleate cells that maintain immunity
to infection and resistance against bacteria
and other foreign entities except euphemisms.
O marvelous reservoir of blood,

red collection so gaudy it is fetish.
Worn-out erythrocytes the spleen destroys
and therefore eventually all the household
cells that submit to local drudgery, the carrying
of oxygen and hemoglobin they can’t keep, and that’s
how you get black bile, the melancholy next to mirth.

2. Liver
This is all the advice M_______ could manage
when they came for Ethyl:

Don’t hold it in your hand for it could be
drunk and not responsible and using that cover.
Beware the liver fluke, it is nothing but mistake,
nothing but parasite. Remember that the liver
does everything in the name of metabolism,
everything it does for Bolsheviks, for Nazis
and punks.

You will still be Ethyl when they call you C2H5OH
and send you to the liver. Do not be easy; you
owe that to womanhood, so wreck what you can.
To think that the first time you leave home
it’s a little trip to the system.
Darling Ethyl, readiness has never mattered.

3. Heart-to-heart Talk
—Have a heart and a nice day.

—Thank you. I have put the heart
in my mouth; is that the right place?

—Here; how about a change of heart?

—No; I haven’t quite finished this one
on my sleeve.

—So it’s that way, is it? I suspect
you’re after my own heart.

—Oh no; you know I don’t have the heart
to do that. You know me by heart; remember?
Please believe me; I’m swearing with all my heart.

—Really? Well, I believe that came from
the bottom of your heart, close to the dregs,
the liver and spleen, not the creamy brain.