Still Birth
Sullen with dust and sharp shadow
cast behind the brown panelled door
the hydrocephalus stands
alone
on three shelves of dark stained wood.
translucent dolphin brain
atrophic limb
looking down with strabismic eyes
to a scuffed parquet floor
Thick-layered, a fade-red curtain conceals
the Cyclops
blunt-nosed
pale, barely-bodied
spiralling into knotty
white umbilical
cut off
from the womb's blood red
amnion exchanged
for formaldehyde, rests
on crushed velvet, which soft tissue
once fed the dividing cell
ghost imprint of promise
ending in a once-painted
room, under glass encrypted
in ochre-blenched ink
Prize winner (commendation) in the 2012 Hippocrates prize for Poetry and Medicine.
Published in the 2012 Hippocrates prize anthology.
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