Vestigial

Ode to the Appendix

in the style of Pablo Neruda

Organ small,
unnecessary,
I caress you.
Sprung from stars
and bound for stars,
poised as a locust,
you are modestly
excessive,
intimate with
the great engines
and boilers,
the heartbeats
and belches,
yet oddly detached.
You loaf and
lounge at your
ease. I think of
Pushkin:
by your good graces
you whipped up in his
belly
no revolution,
refused
to interfere
with the rhythms
of his concentration—
were it up to you,
his voice would
be rhapsodizing still.
The least part
of that mighty poet,
aren't you,
by virtue of such
light employment,
the least defiled
by mundane needs
and uses? Therefore
the most refined,
sluiced in your
oils and chyle,
the most prone
to those late-night
marinatings the
pedants call
lucubrations:
the most pristine
and fit for singing?
Are you not
the very essence
of the deathless
and necessary Poet,
and by extension
everyone?
Little neglected one,
above all,
I caress you.

by Dan Campion
in volume 5 issue 2

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