Advances In Endoscopy

by Len Krisak (January 2014)

Sprouting wires that snake from seven leads,

She swallows it—a camera-pill that tumbles

Through her gut, Fantastic Voyage-like,

A lozenge lensing where intestine feeds.

Will there be blood? We wait. The science humbles.

A thousand shots fed through the pack she’s strapped

To—cell phone-sized computer—tell him, “Strike

Here while the argon plasma’s hot.” All rapt

Before the screen, we look at where she bleeds,

Each pin-prick he intends to cauterize.

The capsule has become our tunnelers’ eyes.

G.I., G.I.  The letters drive us mad

To get back safely to the world we had.

The capsule’s perfect signal fades, then dies.

________________

Len Krisak has published in The London Magazine, The Oxonian Review, PN Review, Standpoint, Agni, The Antioch Review, The Sewanee Review, The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, Agenda, The Hopkins Review, Commonweal, Literary Imagination, The Oxford Book of Poems on Classical Mythology, and others. His latest book is Virgil’s Eclogues, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Forthcoming: The Carmina of Catullus, Carcanet Press, 2015, Afterimage, Measure Press, 2014, Rilke: New Poems, Boydell & Brewer, 2015 and Ovid: The Amores and The Ars Amatoria, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

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