Poetry | Disposal | Mary Ann Schaefer

Disposal listen
What happens to all those breasts after
they get lopped off, I wonder.  I wanted

to ask the surgeon that day she was explaining
like a news anchor how it would go, but

Mother was clutching and wringing my hand or
hers until our fingers writhed, then twitched like

needles on a lie detector.  So I’m guessing.  Maybe
the separation starts by clipping tendons affixed

to the chest wall, rather like pruning tangled vines,
albeit more messy, but then what?  Does the mass

of fatty, fibrous tissue just unhitch, go bouncing off
into space or if not that far then splatter to the floor?

Or does the nurse, suctioning, pass a sterile
platter and quip about separating egg whites?

I’m only asking.

Even if excised boobs get compounded with all
the body parts rubble reduced to landfill dreck or

incinerator ash, maybe the savageness is really
a holy rite like that scene from Dances With

Wolves where the whooping hunter gorges on
stout heart, the excavated bison corpse still

steaming from the race with death.  That’s it!
I’ll say the anesthesiologist savored her bosom like

an oyster in the half-shell, relishing its briny flavor,
the reminiscent surf.  That’s what I’ll say when Mom

wakes blinking, trying to remember . . . not sure
what  . . . fixating on the drains implanted over her

heart, the gauzed shroud swathing a zipper of
swollen stitches . . . her widening puzzlement

asking where did it go?