self / dissection 

more than one layer of skin. 
i'm not speaking
scientifically, i mean 
peeling. petal or fruit flesh.
stem or sinew. what way
do you open? i do not have
the same god or father
i had three years ago.
i open eager &
fearful. three vials of blood.
broken elbow turned boomarang. 
for me, a knife is always a harvestor.
online you can order specimens
for dissection. you don't have to be
a scientist, but then again,
science hovers over all of us.
i used to be a scientist 
of dead birds. i used to pluck out
my own dead feathers & dead beak
& dead talons & the dead sky
ate holes in my bones.
one day i neglected science 
to i turned myself
into a mushroom & i sat there
in warm mucky shade. 
now, yes, i am full of skin again.
online they have all kinds 
of potential dissection bodies. a frog 
splayed talismen wide.
buckets & buckets of worms.
fetal pigs, still waiting 
to be born with their eyes
pressed shut. i was one of them 
& i laid in preserving fluids 
waiting for the good great scapel
to age me into a human.
i dreamed of running
through tall grass & letting
my body sever apart. dropping organs
in the reeds. 
heart. lung. liver.
a body is held together
by very little. single red thread.
i have done it many times,
took a scissors around
the neck of the thread
& tugged at it gentley.
i've said to the thread 
"you want to come apart."
how easily we could be scattered
or jarred or inspected. who would want me
who would want me. a finger. 
a tongue. a shoulder.
i want to put myself 
on the dissection specimen website
but i find no place to offer
so instead i go to the bathroom mirror.
the face is a plate. 
my nose wants
to be cut off & so does
my left eye. they tell me
it's for the sake of discovery.
i tell my body
to wait. in the backyard 
i crouch until i'm a thin
sliver of ivy creeping
between rocks. i will stay here
until my wild unwinding passes.
i am nothing worth
unearthing. somewhere, 
boxes & boxes
of specimens are being shipped.
fetal pig. 
small hooves. closed eyes.
there have been
millions dissected already.
an ancestory 
of still birth. no knew bones.
a repetition. layer 
after layer of skin.