Jane Donohue

Cartesian Split

               All things were together. Then the mind came and arranged them.
                                                           — Anaxagoras

I introduce myself to my body, name my legs and elbows,
make small talk like we’re strangers at an airport terminal.
I drink water so cold it jolts my teeth in their sockets,
run, arms flung wide, into the January ocean just to feel
my blood thrumming in my cheeks, my heart clanging.

I once clambered inside myself like a ghost in the attic.
I peeled the wallpaper and ate it, became
a water stain on the floorboards.
Kings in their castles, God in high heaven,
mind in proud skull: exiles all.

Imagine the brain extending to the belly
like neurons dotting octopus arms,
bestowing thought to sinew and organ.
I’ll think with the freckle on my right hip,
relocate the mind to the meat of my thighs.

I’m redistributing the brain, sewing the psyche
into my stomach lining, along the spooling of my gut.
I am my strong neck and the slope of my shoulders,
I am the throbbing soles of my feet. I am my body
flickering in dance, a flame on a thin wick.

Jane Donohue is a writer of poetry and prose living in Maine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in On the Seawall, West Branch, RHINO, LEON Literary Review, and Stone of Madness.