Travails of a Lab Attendant
I view
the homing Indian bull-frog
with pink thighs,
lying flat on the dissection table;
a flag pinned on it’s webbed hind foot,
says “Hoplobatrachus tigerinus”
the viscera looks
everything like the mangled cosmic whore
from the ancient gully I co-habited long ago.
I scoop the un-laid cluster of her eggs
and carefully mount
on the compound microscope
empowered with condenser lens,
the stage is prepared but
it takes time to focus a genuine specimen.
olive of color like a military strategist in uniform,
the frog missed her cue last evening
and fell into my ravenous net,
it’s the same frog, the consort’d escaped
by shrewdness of the sound of leaves
I trampled on;
I don’t study frogs
or animals for that matter
but animal psychology fascinates,
if not for the perverts of the curriculum
the pair would have had a long desirous night
which is what I keep thinking about,
I don’t do dirty things
like dissecting a frog
or check for the nuptial pads in their legs,
my occupation is to catch these obese models,
feed them for the night
and bring them to the lab,
today the lab is vacant, I capture
the mannerisms of the Prof,
it makes me feel good because he tips me well,
after twenty two minutes of screwing
the knob and the pipe up and down
I pull my eyes off in wetness,
the images of the eggs
stay in my vision
and throw up rapid flashes
of pictures of other female organs
hidden from the scrutiny of science
throbbing in silence.
Saranyan BV © Aug 2011
poem by Saranyan Bee
Added by Poetry Lover
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