print previewback AARON APPS
from Dear Herculine
{ A LETTER WITHIN A LETTER CONCERNING THE CHESTNUT-LIKE GONADS
Dear Herculine,
Photograph of histologic (microscopic) sections of a gonad from the turn of the twentieth century provided by scientists as evidence of their alleged case of “true” hermaphroditism. According to this method (this logic) the only possible “true” hermaphrodite being a dead or castrated one affixed to the surface of a microscope slide
Small lovable cells that spread thick, slime butter.
A nut lard that vibrates, a dark fruit.
Kill the thing, cut open the dead, get at its essence.
Cut and biopsy the autopsy, declare the gender.
Essence as if sex could be defined by a few cells in a profuse smear.
With deathlife the rhetoric of gender is always complicated, messy.
With deathlife even the opened, dissected body is confused.
With deathlife hermaphroditism contorts outwards in a cell flood.
}