Post
from London with 103 fever to my father,
APO HE 09342, Baghdad
All the Kurdistan honey you sent me—
I drizzled into sour-mash whiskey, suspending
mid-glass in viscous curls. A girl
from Tennessee drinks Tennessee
whiskey, the pubtender quibs, unfolding
a white napkin before me.
—Do you like your country
~
music, too? Fever, self-medication: four shots
& then sprawled in my hotel bed, watching crime
shows, Scotland Yard murder while dozing
in & out. A hive of dreams: the fire like honey
clinging. It doesn’t burn that way, you say.
It overruns everything. Pneumonia: the diagnosis.
Why didn’t I go sooner?—the doctor muses,
Your American insurance
~
I’m obliged to trouble with? I take the pills,
swallow them whole: pink
bullets. Sometimes, you hear explosions,
you say, as far away it seems as stars,
& as bantam.
You’re asked to know a country
by its fingerprints & therefore, its criminal action
only. In the lab, the a/c smells sweet,
the coolant resists dissolution,
~
dripping. On the television, the boom & sibilance
of the old year on Trafalgar receding—
into the dream of you as the faceless keeper
approaching with fire, the smoke to lull
the bees that fall soundlessly
having eaten
from all fruits, following the design—
Automaton: The Flute Player, 1738
Jacques de Vaucauson, inventor
Twelve songs to prove his faculty, nine
bellows to create & three pipes
to carry wind to the oral cavity
where a thin tongue controls
the release across the riser, enlivening
the shaft with vibration while the fingers,
padded in leather, piston their combinations
on the keys—the rhythm, perfunctory—
& the notes unwavering in intonation
remain unblemished by innervation,
even as the lips, smooth & wooden,
narrow toward a higher pitch.
Automaton: Francine, 1649
allegedly created & named by Descartes
after his deceased daughter
Uncarved, the fingers. Their delineation
in simple brushstrokes, black.
Her mouth
open. Her name, Francine. Daughter. With creation
always the chagrin from imperfection—
effigy’s insensate rigor. Descartes, traveling
for the last time to Sweden, lugs the heavy box
aboard.
Inside the girl sleeps & does not
sleep, as the dead do. In months, his lungs
will bellow fluid & collapse. The ship rocks.
The head swivels, ball in socket. Endemic
or given, the mind winds down, clockwork ticking.
Bertillon: Three Measurements
In 1883, Alphonse Bertillon devised a system for criminal
identification called “Bertillonage.” In total, ten measurements
of the suspect’s body were recorded at the time of incarceration.
Bust
not heads or genitalia legs or hands
but more torsos survive
from classical architecture so much
defending a territory
& drawing the opposite sex
in the lek arena depends on chest
puffing one’s appearance of being larger than
the self some men
~
breathe in to fool the measurements
mistaking hollowness
for girth they are one the statues
of sturdy marble solid muscle
of stone & permanent grace even
in pieces abdomen joining back
buttocks & pectoralis with organs
& heart the achene uncarved
inside the dormant germ still surviving
fugitive sharing the body
of our ideals
Length and width of the head
a bowl which we carry with no hands
a dark wine
of thought rippling with each step
some men spill
stain some men overflow
the acts of men are difficult to understand
the bread entering us becoming body
in the mind
the wine the blood the deed transfiguring
into guilt
other men have no faith
in the law some men act
on passion
the larger the brain
the more intelligent the animal
some need proof
of their humanity
through punishment 
Emilia Phillips is the author of the chapbook Strange Meeting (Eureka Press, 2010), the lead associate editor of Blackbird, and an MFA poetry candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her poetry has appeared most recently in or is forthcoming from Asheville Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Copper Nickel, Indiana Review, Superstition Review, Sycamore Review, and elsewhere.
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