Amalgamation

Anuel Rodriguez

Amalgamation

How much does a dream
weigh on Earth?
she wonders before
she falls asleep inside
the eye of a white void—
her new embryo of
polyvalent light.

Shapes fill her veins
without blood
and an eclipse of skin
forms under her second skin.
She becomes a breathing
afterimage; a shadow
super-imposed on the
                                 face of creation.

She wakes up and studies
herself in fractured slices—
                     a circle becomes an eye
                     becomes a triangle
                                becomes a nose
                                           becomes a diamond
                                becomes a pair of lips—
until she sees herself
in a mirror for the first
time. She doesn’t know
if home feels like
wind, water or bone.

Maybe she’s not looking
for a home at all.
Maybe she’s really searching
for a meaning of her own
                     in a world
                                           without skin.

_______________

Anuel Rodriguez is a Mexican-American poet living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry has appeared in Glass: Poets Resist and The Road Not Taken.

Editor’s Notes: Rodriguez’s surreal poem, whose subject is perhaps on a quest for meaning is complemented with some strangeness in the image itself: a colorful triangle and a human pupil & iris are collaged with an alien-looking zebrafish embryo “just 22 hours after fertilization, this zebrafish embryo is already taking shape. By 36 hours, all of the major organs will have started to form. The zebrafish’s rapid growth and see-through embryo make it ideal for scientists studying how organs develop.” Image courtesy of Philipp Keller, Bill Lemon, Yinan Wan and Kristin Branson, Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, Va. Part of the exhibit Life: Magnified by ASCB and NIGMS. https://www.flickr.com/photos/zeissmicro/14439328061