Now When I Hear Body Farm (Infection)

It’s just a laboratory. Instead of Bunsen burners,
they stock up on limbs, learn about decay. How bodies change
under aberrant conditions. How to tell time-since-death.

Two hours, she told me through a text.

Now when I hear “body farm,” I see Kenneth
half in the ground, arms out.
A scarecrow with pinpoint

pupils, a blue smile, he starts to grow
toward vultures, decompose.
Here it’s business

as usual. I can see the man—
straw hat, red and denim, spitting
but graceful—shoot skag into the soil,
scatter pills like seeds.

It’s just a lab. Stick to data:
Who collects the bodies?
And how long do they keep them?

What are the odds
that a bottle of pills
would empty by accident?

And what kind of man
would grow a brother dead?
And will this soil ever be wet?

Heroisch is German for powerful.

Now when I hear heroine
she’s telling the children
(not too much at once)

Now when I hear Kenneth
Now body, now blue

Now when I hear tolerance
how much of ourselves we can take
Now free, now base

Now when boy is moon rock
I blood-brain barrier

Now when I body

Now when I farm body
I call it Kenneth

Now straw, now barn
Now sing a digging song

Dig boy, dig moon
Pupil pill-point
Needle blue

Now when dog bite vein
Now when plaid shoot soil

What kind of man
On the body farm

Now heart
Now method

Now body

Now blue