In the Cadaver Lab

There lay the cadavers. There lay the cadavers and they settled with purple around their nipples like my father. There lay the cadavers and they sunk in silver lunchboxes in the lab. There lay my father and he smelled and scolded and shook. There lay the cadavers and they hunched all over and their chests unfolded like rinds and they looked pink under their ringlets from months of methylated spirit. My father convulsed thickly and boldly: the scalpel scraped the hook of his jugular without him bleeding a single word. And the lab was cold as steel and cloaked in bowed heads and above the white stung the fluorescents. There lay the cadavers and scolded and were scraped of fat. There lay the cadavers beside the ghosts and their carving blocks heavy with pork. And my dad with eyes of plastic and blue jays and me. In the back, the radio read obituaries. That is where the cadavers lay and settled with purple around their nipples and slanted spines. They settled. And I was starved in my fingers from peeling along the sternum and ribs and I knew my father would hear me try to stifle his thumps.