Amelia Gorman

Artificial Leeches

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2023: VOL. 38.

Necessity is a cruel goddess in a crystal laboratory.
The bullet compass and sunflower phrenology

spring from her mercury mirror. She reasons
through hungry uses for mummy and phlogiston.

What hurts pales before what heals. Then bodies?
Were they made then to hurt or to heal? Bloody

from the suck of artificial mouths, metal teeth,
advancements mean the blood isn’t eaten

anymore. Doesn’t that make the operation better?
Doesn’t that make the patient ripe for the letting?

Doesn’t that make the body wonder why it trusts
Necessity, who says there were waves of too much

blood in it. The skin red with excess passion,
but redder still with excess invention.