Baby found alive in Argentinian morgue
The Guardian, 11 April 2012
Por Luz Milagros y sus padres
I
Before I forget my being a part
of my mother, beside her liver and kidneys,
her bowel and bladder, my giblet siblings,
like mandarin segments suspended in a jelly,
I would recall just once the soothing sloosh
of words whispered sweetly through aspic.
II
Mother tore apart, a ripened avocado
her insides turned outward, and there
I lay, the waxen stone, nestling
in sundered flesh; and though I strained
to turn away from the light, the filaments
of my life slid from my hands, just as clumps
of dune grass get blown from the sand.
As the last thread snaps, my first life ends.
III
Like some infectious rugby ball,
my bothersome corpse was back-passed clear
of the scrum surrounding the juice-soaked gurney,
away from my guacamole mother.
It happened so quickly. It took all my will
to stay dead to the unattenuated
shadows and howls, as they laid me to rest
in a handy casket of stainless steel.
IV
As the lid was sealed, I drew my primal
breath. The shock of surgical steel
bled through folds of winding cloth
and leached the last of mother’s warmth.
Only then I opened my eyes to the darkly
inherent absurdity of my lot.
Life, my life, though eventful, was over
in the ping of an ECG machine,
and alone I tired of its telling and telling,
its diaphanous plot, its predictable ending.
V
The seal of my tomb was broken with a sharp
intake of breath and I was reborn,
arriving in Argentina an infant
philosopher and an instant sensation. At once
hunger spoke my name, and succour came
at the teet of a gorged and weeping breast.
My mother’s milk tasted of sweetened oil
pressed from her reconstituted flesh.
(c) 2012 Slush Poet
