Gunther von Hagens <\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\nPhotography is not permitted so I make mental snapshots of everything
\nas I mooch around the exhibits and scribble a coded reference
\nin small pencilled letters in the lower left hand corner of each print
\nbefore filing it away in its proper place which I will no doubt forget
\nbecause it is not the Dewy Decimal Classification system that I use
\nfar from it – you only have to take a glance at my book shelves to see
\nhow that would never suffice but rather a rubric of many random
\nassociations which only makes sense in the moment before filing
\nand which makes retrieving books and mental prints time consuming
\nfrustrating but ultimately more interesting in the rediscovery of subtle
\nalignments and as I walk quietly through the half-light from consenting
\nmonster to saint from fisherman runner tight rope walker and lover past
\nthe human sliced thin as honey roasted ham bought over the deli counter
\nI am studying my own hands the skin old scars sub-dermal boulevards
\nthen looking through my own face reflected in the glass of the display case
\nsuperimposed upon the catalogued cadaver with its spinal column
\ndrawn back and out sprayed like the tail of a peacock – when I swallow
\nI notice how my laryngeal prominence rises and dips like a wary seal
\nin scummy waters by the jetty at Bran Sands although I always vanish
\nwhenever I blink so I learned from early childhood to do this quickly
\nto avoid disappearing completely as gas moves somewhere inside me
\nI recall the leaf skeleton I picked up at the end of a winter while cutting
\nthrough the cemetery when the last snow had retreated holding out in
\nlow gullied pockmarks in the hills and which I later placed delicately
\nbut deliberately between the pages of a chosen book before sliding
\nthe book back into its proper new place on one of my sagging over-
\nstuffed shelves which has so far managed to avoid being rediscovered<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bob Beagrie<\/strong>. Recent publications: Yoik<\/em> (Cinnamon Press 2008) The Seer Sung Husband<\/em> (Smokestack Press 2010), Glass Characters<\/em> (Red Squirrel Press 2011), KIDS<\/em> (Mudfog 2012), SAMPO: Heading Further North<\/em> (Red Squirrel 2015) .\u00a0 His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines and\u00a0 has been translated into Finnish, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Karelian, Estonian and Swedish. He is a senior lecturer at Teesside University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Self Portrait With Body Works (after Gunther von Hagens ) Photography is not permitted so I make mental snapshots of everything as I mooch around the exhibits and scribble a coded reference in small pencilled letters in the lower left hand corner of each print before filing it away in its proper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8447"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8450,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8447\/revisions\/8450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}