I learned about Human Anatomy
when I was seven years old. Not
because I wanted to, but because it’s hard
not to notice the body strewn all around
the playground. Did you know that the small
intestine is about twenty feet long? Learned that one
when a mortar shell hit the local recreational center.
Gallbladders look like pears if you tilt your head
a bit. I wish for times when I didn’t
know that a human heart was roughly
the size of a fist, or that the eyes and tongues swell
after one passes, but that’s the price of freedom
I suppose. They get pats on their patriotic backs
while us kids are left to play on bloody swing sets
and sandbox surrounded by the corpses
soon to be cadavers.

*****

Trey Rhone is a senior writing and linguistics major from Augusta, Georgia. When he’s not writing poems about his dad, he enjoys listening to music (ask him about his funeral playlist) and playing video games. He wants to become a professor of creative writing with a focus in poetry.