A Poem

Homology: Repetition in Parts

By Perrin Ireland

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Illustration by the Author
Image

There is a difference between looking at something and seeing it.

vertebrae
ribs
cervical column
big thumbs and big toes

To treat a thing like a house afire. This is the way to touch: always the palm face down on the surface, wanting to know.

If I crawled along on the ground and put each new, manageable item I met into my mouth, perhaps I could get the best story of the world. By using all of the information I can, the taste and the hardness and the noise of it between my teeth, might I hone a most detailed image?

It starts with the bones. The movements and meeting places of all bodily planes.

I like a wide, pink pelvis bone with a blue sky behind it.

Because of this I like Georgia, and the photos of her next to a buffalo skull or standing outside.
And vice versa. And Edward Gorey's etchings of skeletons. And the Nightmare Before Christmas. And Jolly Rogers. 

And collecting skulls.

I have frames of homes

Big conch

muscles used to live, or abalones. Abandoned,

calcareous shells. I have bird bones, and

many teeth.

I look for the things so bare they must have been formerly wrapped in layer after layer of glossy fat and red tissue and tubes of water and stretched skin. The main axes, the vertex. The rock beneath the liquid.

In the woods I make the wagon stop as we barrel through the underbrush to slip down and retrieve a still-brown femur, bits of a jaw. When we get home I lay the bones to soak in a large tub with diluted bleach and dishwashing soap. All of the little clinging life bits will be drowned off.

Then I lay them in the Georgian sun
to dry.

To draw them white, and wrap them inside my sweaters to carry on the plane. Put them on the windowsills, to watch the sky come in through the empty eye sockets.

If the back of my head rolled away suddenly, lopped off, I would stare wide out with everything but the eyes.

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