Tuesday Poem: from my April Daily Poem Notebook

Nerves

filigree out, against the dark background,

like thin branches, rivers, roots, arteries

veins, winding country roads, mapping

a woman, the nerves of her brain outlining

a skull, the eyeballs attached gazing out at us,

the nerves of the arms spreading wider
than arms, more like billowing sleeves
leading down to the hands, the nerves of the legs
curving wide as a full skirt, looking gauzy 
and sheer as hand made lace, giving her 
girth and presence, the channels of her 
pleasure and pain, memorializing 
a lifetime of sensation.

A woman donates her body to science,

and doctors make her into an archeological dig,

painstakingly excavating her fragile
nerve network, easing them out of muscle
and flesh, cleaning away all fat and blood,
until she is a white tree reaching down
toward the earth, all twig and root,
eyes seared by light, no longer
protected by sinew and bone,

attached to a delicate net cast wider

than the body that once contained it,

as if she were frayed into tatters

by all she’s seen, heard, felt, tasted, smelled.

This is what a women wears

beneath the skin: a big lacy dress of pain

pulsing along from synapse to synapse,

and global gushes of pleasure that travel

everywhere at once, galactic as the Milky Way,

nerves that reach beyond the body’s tidy

boundaries, rivering out to connect with

a matrix of others, until we come undone.

We moan, and flush, tremble, holler, and weep.

And men are driven to make it into geography.