A premature revelation

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