If we're anything it's middle schoolers
in lab coats, clustered at a wax dissecting pan
where someone has coaxed a frog, the myth,
the truth of seventh grade
science, from a formaldehyde bag
onto his back, his white belly
and open, I-surrender arms gesturing
mercy, a quality not many of us learn
till we've been pinned ourselves
to a few wax pans.
We skewer it into position, wincing
when the pins go through the hands.
Eventually one of us will rise
to the occasion, dig open the stomach
and lay bare the secret life of its digestion,
squirt an eyeball at a girl whose hand we'd like
to hold, maybe even tuck
the smear of its heart in our pocket
and astonish the lunchroom after class.
But for now we pass around the scalpel,
hand to uncertain hand,
you, no you, no you,
shift weight from foot to foot, wonder
who's going to make
the first cut.
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