Justin Groppuso-Cook
—
Luminous Viscera: Oil on Canvas
for Joe Groppuso
What ails me:
such heartache
swept in his canopic chest,
these chambers
a void. His masterpiece
looming
in our living room.
Gold leaf lines the edges,
his strokes of alabaster jars:
Imsety, human-headed,
his liver of bourbon;
Qebehsenuef, falcon-headed,
intestines of blackening tar;
Hapi, baboon-headed, lungs
of smoke;
Duamutef, jackal-headed, blossoming
poppies in his gut.
Ancient Egyptians left the heart
in the sarcophagus—
necessary for safe passage.
But doctors cut forth his
in the night, scalpel like a brush
blending burgundy
to black. Replaced his valves with that
of a pig—heavy,
I wept.
I transplant myself into his rib
cage: the frame
fractured.
Seep into the cracks, the foreground
weeping with varnish—
I have nothing to give, not even my own
to weigh upon the scales
of the afterlife. I bear with the dead,
befriend them, bare all.
My lighthearted sacrifice: a brushstroke
that overturns the feather.
Veins flood as I uphold his body
& carry us through the reeds.
Justin Groppuso-Cook is a poet, musician, and healing artist from Detroit, Michigan. His work is forthcoming in Pacifica Literary Review, The Pinch, The Inflectionist Review, Sonora Review, and Ghost City Review. He received the 2021 Haunted Waters Press Award for Poetry and was a finalist for Black Warrior Review's 2022 Poetry Contest. His manuscript, "Illuminated Pupils", was a semi-finalist for the Black River Chapbook Competition and Tomaž Šalamun Prize. He serves as a writer-in-residence at InsideOut Literary Arts Project and poetry reader for West Trade Review. www.sunnimani.com
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