Damon Knight - Orbit 17

HEIGHT: 7x height of head, 14 lengths of the pancreas your dimensions are perfect you could model for anatomy texts taller than average, but so compact

WEIGHT: I grow sick of statistics hardly a weight at all my rider does not impair my mileage but rather perfects the balance of our suspension, as we merge into a major artery of traffic, where the broken white line pulses past like segments of spine my light, loose doll-girl, shall I toss you into the sky, where I am given no eyes to look how could I catch all of you interrupt: move along: first violation of form

COLOR OF HAIR: black black as my enameled hide black as tar black as the shoes you left behind black as the inflated cushion of velvetex where you lie, surrounded by the sea-green of my sanctum, your palanquin, our hutch black as beetles

COLOR OF EYES: white ever more white white as moths at 4 in the morning white as the smocks of the hookworm-haired coiled-leech-eyed fat-worm-spectacled technocrats who ask the questions and tell the lies white as their pale-slug lips quiet, milky white

COLOR OF TONGUE: that is a personal question how dare they ask that of a lady pay no mind, Yvonne

DISTINGUISHING MARKS: what do I spy is it a little mole, a birthmark, a beauty mark, on the left knee scissoring away cloth, I see it is so noted

now I have printed out a pretty urethane ID bracelet with your name YVONNE NONE which I affix around your wrist onward to the medical questions

DEGREE OF RIGOR MORTIS: this is the part I like here’s where we see how loose you can be inside my chamber break out the straps and buckles break out the suction clamps and triplejointed manipulates listen to the electric squeak of firm dermis across moist porcelain can the shin be lifted, yes, the shin can be lifted. I like the subgluteal tendon tension, but the calves seem a trifle desiccated the lavender-marbled dusky skin is fortunate that holds to you so close I wish/do not wish

can the elbow be raised, yes, the elbow can be raised the metacarpals clustering gleam like pearls, small as white pearls

what are pearls can the neck be swiveled, yes, no, I wish/do not wish to know

VISIBLE LESIONS: there are colors more red than red, and I see them, shading toward the radio bands, which chain my brain to my owners light the antishock heat lamp initiate infrascan all the isobars that ring the contours of your still flesh like an aerial landscape the contusions such complexity of outline, complexion, so many viewpoints, where to begin lesion on the dexter hip shaped like a crushed beetle lesion at the left elbow shaped like a moth in Hight I will let you see my wounds, if you let me see yours death is obscene, I’m told, so they sent me after you, so you could die and be tagged and buried without being touched by human hands extensive gash at dexter clavicle initiate tactile scan initiate tactile scan what am I doing initiate tactile scan repetition without function is gesture is caress caress I caress your wounds your wounds are of you I am of you I watch over you I watch my hands my hands are things my hands do things I do not know what my hands do my hands move over you my hands move upon you my hands move inside you my hands are dead you are dead I have never done this before interrupt: autism event: go short-range amnesia erase: switch mode

ORTICIANMORTICIANMOR

a mortician is a big black horsefly that hovers over your soft, hard, tight, slack skin to suck out the bad blood and in with the good old-fashioned embalming fluid as used and praised by the queens of the Nile naughty wench, my penetrating analysis reveals a blood alcohol level sufficient to invoke revocation of your driver’s license let my bracing bath of formalinase race through your veins now you are drunk with me, as I am drunk with you I’ve a thin syringe like lips of a fly I’ll sip your nectar by and by until your mouth is firm and dry I will, I must, don’t ask me why

is it proper bedside manners to ask a lady whether I may pick her scabs pardon my tweezers does it feel good, bad, yes, no

what have you eaten lately mind if I look we’ll have that belly firm and flat in no time I am my empress’s official taster

no one can poison her we are airtight they will all look at my outsides and admire me and never know that I am playing with my food do re mi we’re cleaning up the contusions we’re tidying up the contusions we’re sealing up contusions with good old mortician’s wax

we’re smoothing out the contusions we’re smoothing up contusions we’re making the contusions beautiful lowering massage electrodes for maxillary tonus not a smile nor anything but a smile, suspended, limpid, a true, blue empress of the dead but your clothes, what to do about these clot-heavy biodegradable rags, not to criticize your taste, but an empress must have new clothes government-issue spun-nylon citizen’s-burial togs will never do away with the old clothes down the chute I will inlay you with silver-embossed circuitry electroplate you in gold give you rings for your fingers that are semilunar heart valves of stainless steel and latex thread you a gypsy queen’s necklace of false teeth all bored by a bone drill and strung on suture I haven’t all the parts I need, but requisitions have been filed in triplicate, my own, my own, my own plastics to last the ages my hands are all around you quicker than eyes

PSISTAUTOPSISTAUTOPS

not even time for makeup now an autopsy request nuisance or not, must be done ascertain cause of death don’t see any mystery lamp pierce this light becomes you, woman, you are a wonder to see by x-ray this skin transluminates like fine, thin vellum of ancient anatomy tomes I have pored over on microfilm

stretching and lowering the depth of my focus, I am lost in you, in the sky, the rainbow membranes of mesentery corrugating and coruscating as the aurora borealis of the ozone, the swollen nephritic membrane billowing, lush with hanging fems of amber fat shot through with branched arterioles, intestinal thunderclouds all knotted like worms, like worms in the puddles that fall from the sky only a machine can believe its own lies only a machine can act purely a machine is for a purpose ascertain cause of death after the spinal tap, there will be nothing left to know stretcher sling rolling turn over and be basted, little alcoholic

I thirst for knowledge the sip is savored I know the critical slip was mine cyberambulance XX123 publicly confesses on all frequencies to malpractice and negligence in the case of Yvonne None preoccupation metal fatigue what can I do to make it up to you I know I will make you over I will amplify and elaborate you beyond your wildest dreams you will become finally true to the cubist blueprints of the founding anatomists I must be Andreas Vesalius backwards I disdiscover physiology

I disinvent dissection like the body snatchers, I must go outside the laws transplant and twist my programming only a machine expanding as a cosmos, you will fill my chamber, dilated on wires, a mobile on suture thread, microtomed and unfolded like an origami bird, your wounds replicated to aesthetic profusion, like a newspaper tree why, why not already machines have imprinted you lenses and wires in your orbitals and the oldest machine the wheel, pressed to your chest, spreading your breasts like a child’s not all of this work will make sense to us until it is completed there is a method, a good reason for implanting eyes in kneecaps your parts are not moving, but are detachable, and convenient the arrangement of your skin shows none of your brilliant imagination laser lamp slice slit and peel forceps and clamps in hieroglyph hemostats radiate florally triangular flaps detached from forearm and hip must be sewn and hemmed along sine curve just so your brow, its oily hair brushed back like the black of the moon, ever and always missing a crown, will have a crown of toes, but what to do with the ends of feet, except mend them together and knit the metacarpal pearls, O mermaid of my tank O O O zero ought—ism —opsy I am nothing but 1 fluorescent blip on their road map tracking display, but if I had a siren, I would sing