Don’t get complacent while working around power equipment. Practice and abide by all safety procedures. Ensure all proper guards are in place. Are you wearing your proper PPE? Have you verified that all of your buttons are buttoned, zippers zipped, that your hair is pulled back in a ponytail or tucked adequately up into your cap? Are you wearing your safety glasses, steel toe work shoes?
(see examples of job related disaster below)
I. A cold slab tickle drains the fat deposits of a motormouthed twin with no feet, no tongue, no hands to speak of; but lying safe in the humerus, below the clavicle of a forced habit. No one could really explain why a torso didn't accompany the arm, why an unborn twin wasn't described in the course outline for Basic Cadaver Anatomy @ Bastyr University, why the head had only half a smile- twisted and faded behind the cameo pink shield of the brachialis. But one student in the back of the class heard electric organs playing in his 3rd eye- when they sliced that fucker open.
II. Industrial ave maria bubbles pump from the vintage alpines in his chest. rapture, uncomplicated by context, circumcised of its gag reflex. pure as the calcified skin casket being spread to reveal its soft by sharp metal fingers. its developing vascular system, a mound of neon spider webs, old man frail but baby sweet. bulging like a bloated conscience - exposed for its gelatin - congealed electricity. a ball of unfinished organs frozen in a sudden death that redefines life. recognition creeps over the cyclops and he pats his right forearm as the camera pierces brown, pink, red then finally bone to a hand, no larger than his pinky nail, returning the hi five.
III. A story he’d heard at a party over the weekend. An Afghani goat herder, once a year would come down the mountain pass and sell his goats in a populated market square. The villagers called him, “The Pregnant Man” because he was so fat. When the Pregnant Man came down this time, American doctors were in the village helping the sick. They saw the bulge at his midsection and thought it was a cancerous tumor. Cutting it open, they found the remains of his stillborn twin brother inside of a pouch in the abdomen. Hair and nails and underdeveloped teeth.
***
Have you checked to make sure that you don’t have any remnants of your own twin sibling living inside of that arm that is being removed at this moment by these bumbling surgeons?
Now comes out the saw. Watch gently as they cut off your own arm. Look how easy it comes off. Like trimming the hedges out by the curb. It's gotta be done.
Pretend that it’s just Step One in a two part procedure.
Step Two, happens after the limb is lopped off and cauterized.
They pass the mangled arm like a hot potato to the nearest nurse who carries it out of the operating room and down the hall, chunks of viscera plopping on the floor like spaghetti with meat sauce. The surgeons keep an alligator as a pet in a room deep in the bowels of the hospital. They feed it severed limbs and sometimes people who have gotten too rowdy in the ER waiting area during an overcrowded holiday weekend.
Whistling, another nurse opens a tall grey cabinet, retrieves a robotic arm.
The surgeons wire the new arm into the central nervous system as if it’s as simple as hooking up a car stereo. A few simple connections.
Then, the wounded flesh between the new mechanical limb and the old torn flesh is wrapped in gauze and the patient is woken up and told very sternly, “Your new bionic arm must be looked after very closely. There is a chance for infection. No swimming in the pool and no trips to the beach for at least two weeks. Apply ample Neosporin. Change the bandages daily. No arm wrestling... That's now considered a federal offense for you.”
*written during SHARKWEEK by: Aurora Killpoet, Bud Smith & Frankie Metro.
