‘Dissection Day’ by Victoria Kennefick

Pull a set of lungs
          from a butcher’s plastic bag.
All the diagrams that ever were cannot
          prepare for such gross-pink sponginess. 
Insert a straw into the windpipe, blow.
          Remove your lips, lungs

          collapse.

Allow the heart to rest
          on your palm like a stone,
slippery, perfectly asymmetrical.
          Poke the septum, cut through.
Clutch of muscles butterfly under a winking
          knife; thick chamber and thin,

          pulses race.

Slit an eye bigger
          than yours; cornea crunchy
under blunt instruments. Circle
          the pupil, aqueous humour squirts.
Eye deflates – until, at last, 
          you see the

          blind spot.

From issue #1: autumn/winter 2015

About the Author
Victoria Kennefick’s debut poetry pamphlet, White Whale (Southword Editions 2015), won the Munster Literature Centre Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition 2014 and the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2015. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Stinging Fly and New Irish Writing, and she is a recipient of the Arts Council Next Generation Award. Follow her @VKennefick.