I saw this poem in the recent issue of The New Yorker, and I wasn't 100% sure about what the overall message was. I am hoping that someone can read it here and give me a little guidance because it's pretty intense. By reading it, I feel like I want to know what it's all about.
My Autopsy
by Michael Dickman
There is a way
if we want
into everything
I'll eat the chicken carbonara and you eat the veal, the olives, the small and glowing loaves of bread
I'll eat the waiter, the waitress
floating through the candled dark in shiny black slacks
like water at night
The napkins, folded into paper boats, contain invisible Japanese poems
You eat the forks,
all the knives, asleep and waiting
on the white tables
What do you love?
I love the way our teeth stay long after we're gone, hanging on despite the worms or fire
I love our stomachs
turning over
the earth
--------
There is a way
if we want
to stay, to leave
Both
My lungs are made out of smoke ash sunlight air
particles of skin
The invisible floating universe of kisses, rising up in a sequinned helix of dust and cinnoman
Breathe in
Breathe out
I smoke
unfiltered Shepheard's Hotel cigarettes
from a green box, with a dog on the cover, I smoke them
here, and I'll smoke them
There
--------
There is a way
if we want
out of drowning
I'm having
a Gimlet, a Caruso, a
Fallen Angel
A Manhattan, a Rattlesnake, a Rusty Nail, a Stinger, an Angel Face, a Corpse Reviver
What are you having?
I'm buying
I'm buying for the house
I'm standing the round
Wake me
from the dash of lemon juice,
the half measure of lemon juice, apricot brandy,
that make up paradise
--------
There is a way
if we want
to untie ourselves
The shining organs that bind us can help us through the new dark
There are lots of stories about intestines
People have been forced to hold them, alive and shocked awake
The doctors removed M's smaller one and replaced it, the new bright plastic curled around the older brother
Birds drag them out of the dead and abandoned
Some people climb them into Heaven
Others believe we live in one
God's intestine!
A conveyer belt of stars and saints
We tie and we loosen
Minor
and forgettable
miracles
So, what do you make of this poem? The sections, the references, the repetitions? What does this poem mean?
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