Emily Rosko

Test

There was a case study I was

later informed. Designed as a system

of checks. Mice hooked by tubes

and a monkey that upraised

a wreck. Plottings by coordinates

on graph paper, sodium level

intake, the raw-rubbed head

of a teddy. And there were strangers

who called from afar. Mostly they

were kind. They brought with them

a memory-set. It was a project,

I was responsible. Each rabbit

deskinned, lucky leg a child

carries. A piece I’ve mislaid, a flash-card

carousel I don’t want to spin on.

(I’m tiger when designated, other

times I clam and shell out

what’s given). My insides turned

wishy. This syringe innocent. Then,

a return to the original

routine genetic detasseling. Long

stretch of know-nothing concrete

and blank-faced buildings and

here we go around the mulberry

bush. It’s a forever Monday.

The chloroform’s burning sweet.

---

[I play the torturer by small and small]

I’ll have what it takes

if taking rooks the larger

placeholding. Rounded by

centered logic. The mountain

disabled, turned hole and sore

spot opened in the crust. Water-filled.

Sludged for the small substance:

mineral mined by hands

which will never touch

the worth. We’re to get

to the bottom, told to hate the world

a plenty. I’d count the instrument’s

finer calculations, tension pointed

sharp-toothed blade.

Meager as goats the bodies

on the trash heaps. Beggared

for a past lost, handed out. The rocks

shard my eyes. How to unlearn

this self I’ve wanted to be? Scrape it

low, pick each bone clean.

Emily Rosko’s two poetry collections are Prop Rockery, awarded the 2011 Akron Poetry Prize, and Raw Goods Inventory, an Iowa Poetry Prize winner in 2005. She is editor of A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (University of Iowa Press, 2011). Her poems appeared most recently in Another Chicago Magazine, Antioch Review, New Orleans Review and has work forthcoming in Anti-. She is assistant professor at the College of Charleston and poetry editor for Crazyhorse.