Scalpel
by Joel Vega

blades are usually made of hardened and tempered steel.
And stainless. As if all blood cannot contaminate, cannot infect

the sharpened edge. A scalpel does not simply cut, no, it whispers,
oh so softly, making the lightest purr on the skin, precision

movement like a line of sharp staccato notes, incision of pain,
fat giving way to muscle, muscle to bone. But let us examine

the hardened steel. Hardened like stone and diamond? Or bone?
But human bone is fragile, cannot withstand a stray gene,

a DNA sequence gone awry.  Steel does not betray an array
of alloying elements: iron, carbon, manganese, tungsten.

Against these elements,  skin is open territory.
The surgeon holds the blade with the second, third, fourth fingers,

the scalpel handle secure along the base of the thumb,
a dinner knife grip, the best, they say, for initial incisions

and larger cuts. Let us look beneath the blood-soaked sheets,
beneath the mute language of latex-gloved hands, at that beating

muscle called heart. There it lies on its own cage of curved bone, primed,
hardened and tempered, insisting not too gently, entirely stained.

© Joel Vega

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