quick. A slit sliced past the thick of a mammal’s
plight. Pacing, measure the diameter as the doctor
hastens, see how he slips in his sight? The flick
of a hand misplaced—the scalpel falls, the patient
still unmoving, her mouth, a loop of understood
phrase: A beluga heart can pump six tubs of blood
in three beats per minute. But this woman’s life, faulty
as light undone. The surgeon fixes the strength of his lamp,
his prodding hand in the dark of cavity, clamps. See
how her flaps lack closure, firm stick: Heart’s flaw,
blood leaks slick. The cardiac output of a bowhead’s feat.
The phenomenon of whale, failed woman’s remedy. Listen,
a humpback barters the grooves of its throat and the thrust
from its fluke. We’ll climb through the ribs, now split
in two. A whale holds wires to carry electrical cues, even
to signal a pulse that sounds behind the blubber. See
among the tissue—the push past aorta, bruise, blood’s rush
to find an airtight route, again and the thumping renews. Soon
blood fills the beak. Pummels the pleats. Spy caudal seam,
the body’s rooms, supplied— oxygen’s seep. O fin whale,
O southern right, your size— can we trade performance, speed—watch
under knife. I would make this woman turn minke-like. See,
valves leak backwards, fight lost leak. Doctor sews, stows
belief. Sly whale’s falser plea: To mend a lapse, we fuse
at breach. Minor chords, fainter key: the largest heart we tried
to keep. Sound intact. Syntax attached. Scalpel rinsed free.
*The poem draws in part from the following article:
Wickstead, Mark. “Humpback whales pioneer new heart treatment.” CNN, 2008,
https://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/03/medicine.biomimic/index.html.