Emasculated by Science

Michael Kopacz

WHO SUFFERS ELECTRON LOSS at the rate of several gigs per hour? Who else? I spray apart like a human-sized sparkler as I ride the subway into work. Bits of me flash into nothingness. Waves of me go into orbit around Saturn, others falling into the Sun or joining with rogue comets. The remaining balance struggles in the traincar for whatever dignity has become, but it's difficult to even breathe. Once again a train has collapsed somewhere down the line and forced all of its horribly fated and indignant occupants out to catch the next available train which is already standing room only. The shove and tuck in the car provokes me in ways I could never have imagined. My face sprouts to a morphological echo of hammer. Nations of electron-losing bodies wiggle in my brainpan by the spoonful. I clutch at my throat like the mad Dr. Strangelove-a gush of eggs-over-easy invading my nostrils, maggoty newsprint choking me: Hundreds More Exhumed From Angola, Bosnia, Guatemala, Armenia, Iran, Albigensia, Babi Yar. I stare at a woman a few feet away, overcoming her, turning her head slightly till her eyes focus on the neck in front of her. The little neck hairs are so close they tickle my nose. Deeper, into the flesh, and she sees the moon's surface, insects of the skin poking from the crater holes. She whispers to the neck with my lips, What did I do wrong in my past life to deserve this? But nothing stirs. We've made no impact. On the wall nearest me a poster of half a dozen tooth-beaming and archetypal Republicans wave smoking cigarettes to celebrate the joy of American utopia. I realize vandalism to be a perfectly natural response. But murder?
 

Michael Kopaczl