Sweetbody told me
that in the Republic
of Mars
surgeons operate
not with scalpels
in their mitts but
with musical instruments-
can this be true?
The ragged edges of
make-believe are
strained by that metal.
Who can’t see the
trumpeting surgeon
blowing an abdomen open
with the brass,
or the piccolo twiddling
away the cerebellum?
What fancy irritations
for the bemused patient.
Locked in death,
the corpse is a feast
of sound;
the human recovery
a triumphal procession.
Death allegro,
life andante.
Maybe on Mars
concerts are swashbuckling
events,
redder than the planet itself.
Previously Published in Indiana Review.
Jack D. Harvey has been writing poetry since he was sixteen. He lives in a small town near Albany, N.Y. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired. Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, Mind In Motion, The Comstock Review, The Antioch Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The University of Texas Review and a number of other on-line and in print poetry magazines over the years, many of which are probably kaput by now, given the high mortality rate of poetry magazines.
califragile.org 