from Body Clock

“of spatial magnitude, or of the extension of a body in the several dimensions of space”

“Growth involves the same concepts of magnitude and direction [as]… the ‘dimension’ of Time”

—D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

Monday, here am I, mortal
machine, clicking in the toothed
metal of time, altricial (born naked and nearly
blind). The traveling bag of my
existence (left lung
slightly smaller to accommo-
date the heart) is having a conversation
with itself (medulla
talking to shin). Your brain too
is having a conversation with the body.
Heart walks down the street, Boston
attached to [a] woman / man / spring day / lovely
in the semilunar valves of the heart
sings

what will the baby be shaped like?
will she come out round with a red
rose tattoo?

with wing of the ilium?
   

Body said, What?

will she come out innominate
with many parts otherwise unnamed; as, the innominate artery, a great branch of the arch of the aorta; the innominate vein, a great branch of the superior vena cava
   

Body said, What?
   

——bed she built——
   

when she lies down     when she arises
from the placenta’s vascular sheets

touching all the quantum fields she walked through to
greet me
    

heart was
found asymmetrically
locked in the chest      You can’t make it
turn round      not around

__________________________

pierce the
porous skin of
a minute       see time bleed out
__________________________

midnight / noon
is at the crown

twelve fifteen is
at the lips
     

BODY CLOCK

the breastbone brushes three
& the wishbone splits