Gloria
Janine Canan
Anatomist? Two hundred years ago
they would have burned her at the stake--
she’s a witch!
Gloria’s mother came home late every night
from the dress factory, carping at her girls.
Gloria’s black eyes harden.
Have you seen the way she handles the cadavers--
it’s very sexual. Imagine, each morning she gets up,
puts on her blond wig, makeup, and comes to the lab to dissect.
Gloria’s hair is black as shiny fur.
She leans forward, mother of two daughters,
medical student at thirty-four.
When some kid in class asked why she uses plaster models instead
of cadavers, she answered, “Do we have the right to use cadavers at all,
unless we too give our bodies to be dissected after we are dead?”
And Gloria, whose Italian grandmother
scoured floors till you could eat off them,
smiles triumphant, striding life and death.
