HUMAN

by Darrell Petska

Photograph and sculpture by Yuichi Ikehata

I’m part American, part Czech, part
Israeli and Kenyan, part Russian, Swedish,
Palestinian, part northern hemisphere
and southern, part all things spawned
from stardust in the roiling sea of space,

so why does my body war with itself,
one eye peering left, the other right, one ear
denying what the other one hears, each leg
opposing the other’s direction while my hands
hammer and claw each other till they bleed?

One by one, I pare away my warring parts,
yet the battles rage on. Soon, of all I was,
only my two-sided heart shall remain.
Already, each side argues a different allegiance—
surely one will stop beating just to spite the other,

and there I’ll lie, at last a heap of bones some
beast shall drag into its lair as lesson to its offspring
of what transpires when a body’s many parts
fail to live in harmony. More fortunate stolid
stone and knobbly bark than unruly human flesh.

Darrell Petska, a Wisconsin poet, is one part of a large and loving family.