Borrowed Bodies

I stared at the spongy yellow bone marrow,
and the red rope muscles wrapped around
cut spaghetti tendons.
My mouth filled with somach acid and formaldehyde.
The sheet pulled back revealing the head
of the skinless corpse.
His lips looked like two
earth worms stuck together.
I picked at my dry chapped lips.

The sheet kept rolling down the corpse
as though the professor was peeling an onion.
I saw the lungs next
black holes and burnt flesh.
He died of lung cancer,
worked in a print shop.
I thought of how his cillia
the lungs sweepers died gradually.
Breaths becoming shorter
and shorter.

I tried to control
my breathing.
To listen to
the lecture.

Body on loan for two years.
Housed in Olympia
Pay attention take notes.

Morbid curiousity moved my body
closer to his body.
I wanted to see this man, I wanted to know him.
All I could see
was empy eye sockets and the skull-bowl exposed.