Nine Island by Jane Alison Page A

the world, a caravan of skinless bodies in elaborate poses. Midstride, odalisque, midfuck. I think one peeled body was hitting a volleyball.
    It happened to be curated by the husband of my doctor.
    And as soon as I thought of it, even the balmy Biscayne Bay air wasn’t strong enough to overcome the smell of that waiting room in Heidelberg, the waiting room in the Frauenklinik . The other fruitless women, bitter with added hormones and subtracted caffeine, sat in wooden chairs against the walls and waited, the floor muddy, smell of old wet stone and must. Every so often a door in the corner would open and a voice would cry Die nächste, andthe next woman would get up and look back at us waiting and go into a lit room for blood to be drawn, then into a dark room to take off her pants and lie back and let the probe be jabbed in and tooled around to see if any grapelets were growing. We were to get up and go in the order we’d come, and it was our job to know this order, so each looked up fast when a new harried woman appeared at the door, to be sure she knew her place. I’d memorize each woman’s face, look at the other slumped waiting bodies, and gradually think of the people who’d donated their dead selves to my doctor’s husband, the room slowly blurring into a tableau of peeled bellies and heads.
    By now I’d reached the green verge on the other side of the drawbridge, the duck standing in her station, gazing bravely north at the bay. As soon as she hears my FitFlops now, she starts waddling to our meeting point by the sea grape. I strewed Grape-Nuts and poured water into the dish, and as she shucked her fear and darted close to begin eating inches from my foot, I tried again to touch her—fingers nearly on her shiny black feathers—but she flapped away, affronted. Okay, okay. Under the shrub was a plastic bottle; I slid my message inside and tied a pink ribbon around the neck.
    Hello, whoever is feeding this duck—please call! We have to save her.
    At the next island , o n one broad square of pink concrete, two tiny anoles wriggled entwined. At my bad-luck footfall, they scratched away quickly into the grass.

G O OD NEWS! The labyrinthine-brain coral continues to live, down by Paradise Found . I squatted in the sun for a time to watch it waver through clear green water.
    All those coiling passages. Brains, intestines, inner ears.
    Female passages, too.
    Hysterosalpingogram being a good, if sad, way to see them.
    Uterus-salt-dye-picture.
    Which I’ve been thinking and thinking about again, ever since the Human Body ran by.
    You lie on your back in a room lit by little lights on machines, same room as always or maybe an earlier dim room in another city or country, because this went on an awfully long time, and you watch as the doctor’s hands say Go, and up inside you flows the ink, branching in ever tinier tributaries, like a water land shining in the dusk. And if the ink travels far enough, you know that this at least is not the problem.
    In the museum across the street from our apartment, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, was a glass sculpture of the viscera of a shark. My favorite thing there. A glassy tumble so large on the scuffed floor in cool northern light that it took time to circumambulate. Its kidneys, liver, intestines, and heart, translucent, fragile, and clean.

A FTER WORKING late last night, needed out and went down to the dock. Gazed at the dark glittering bay to the cityscape of red, green, white lights, up to the blowing tropical sky, ripped clouds lit blue by the moon. Then something suddenly came to life on the tallest distant building: a twenty-story dancing girl made of LED lights. I leaned elbows on deck rail and watched her swing her pony mane, wriggle her hips, kick her white boots.
    Light-Emitting Diode : like a tiny bright creature in surf.
    When I came in at the side entrance by the Dumpsters, where Tina in Receiving has her crosses