This week’s poem shows us in intricate detail what’s happening behind closed doors in a lab to make possible some of the pharmaceuticals that people have come to rely on.
Michelle Menting teaches at the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection “Leaves Surface Like Skin” (Terrapin Books, 2017) and two poetry chapbooks.
Pharmaceutical
By Michelle Menting
To draw blood from a mouse,
first alcohol the tail. Get it wet
and bare—the liquid does this,
plasters hair to lucid skin.
The tail becomes cordlike
or remnant of cord. It whips,
all three to four inches whip
against your latex glove.
You can do this
one-handed: hold the rodent
down, insert the smallest needle
and extract. Or push. Inject
happiness, clear skin, smooth cuticles,
or erections for 85th birthdays.
With a cage of six, you’ll practice.
Wield your syringe like a weapon. Draw
blood, insert saline. Practice
on more. Soon, you’ll graduate
to rat gavage, to birth control
for beagles, then learn the P’s & Q’s
of chromosomal X’s & Y’s.
You’ll get promoted
to lab-coat status
for liquefying immortality.
For encapsulating everlasting love
in tablet form.
Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is a poet who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2010 Michelle Menting. It appeared originally in Opium in 2010, appears in “Leaves Surface Like Skin” (Terrapin Books, 2017), and appears here by permission of the author. For an archive of all the poems that have appeared in this column, go to www.pressherald.com/tag/deep-water.
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