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  • the body
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the body

So Much for Mañana - by Judith Ortiz Cofer

{ Poem }

After twenty years in the mainland
/ Mother’s gone back to the Island
/ to let her skin
/ melt from her bones
/ under her native sun.
/ She…

The Sari - by Moniza Alvi

{ Poem }

Inside my mother
/ I peered through a glass porthole.
/ The world beyond was hot and brown.
/
/ They were all looking in on me…

Ripeness - by Alasdair Gray

{ Poem }

It is three months since you taught me love can be fun
/ and one since you came to fruit,
/ breasts weighty and…

The Curator - by Norman Kreitman

{ Poem }

Step this way, sir. Just here you may see
/ a child’s head so full of water
/ that the world’s alarms were quite…

Dissection of an Infant – Vascular Preparation - by Anne MacLeod

{ Poem }

I would have loved you, wept
/ with your father and your mother
/ over these tiny perfect hands, perfect feet
/
/ preserved skin-free, en-pointe –
/ as…

My Mother’s Body Interrogated By Light - by Gerrie Fellows

{ Poem }

This is what happened
/ Someone lifted a grey translucency to the light
/ and held it there
/ seeing the knit fracture in the clavicle
/ the…

The Man With Three Legs - by Diana Hendry

{ Poem }

From the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery,
/ University of St Andrews
/ In the autumn of 1948 a message was received from a…

Voluntary Redundancy - by Christine De Luca

{ Poem }

‘There is at least a moderate risk that there is in your family
/ an alteration in a gene that can cause…

From the Hinterland - by Anna Crowe

{ Poem }

After a visit to the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and especially for Kazimierz Kuczynski,
/ F.R.C.S. Edinburgh, and his…

The Heart of the House - by Tom Pow

{ Poem }

Blackened
/ through lack of care
/ like an old grate
/ raked from the fire,
/ its two wings collar
/ the trapped air
/ and fuse at their lower tips
/ as…

Ned Black’s Dream - by Suhayl Saadi

{ Poem }

The Misses Nelly to the Burgess surgeon!
/ This very night, a performance
/ Of dissection – flexing leg, belly, supple loin and eye…

dàn - by Aonghas MacNeacail

{ Poem }

sgrìobh thu air m’ anam
/ do nàdur, a bhidse gun chridhe, is dhùin
/ thu an leabhar gu grad mus d’ ràinig
/ sinn deireadh…

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