Histology

for Marianne Moore

Perched on a clawfoot

tub eating leftover sardines

your mother, prime source 

of nutrition, never fed you

but roosters in the water

closet eat amity, oyster shells

while a smokeless furnace,

arms without thumbs, seethes

like a smoldering cigar 

smirch on the handrail stop

and Alectryon pinches a sun

bowl of getaway fare – you,

by omission, lie humidly 

thwarted, unfixed by wonder.

---

Elizabeth S. Gunn

Elizabeth S. Gunn serves as the Dean of the School of Arts, Sciences, and Business at Nevada State University. She writes poetry and fiction in Henderson, Nevada, where she and her wife live with their three rescue pups in the endless Mojave Desert. Her website is http://www.elizabethsgunn.com/ and she's on X at @_DeanGunn.