This week’s poem shows us in intricate detail what’s happening behind closed doors in a lab to make possible some of the pharmaceuticals that people have come to rely on.

Michelle Menting teaches at the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection “Leaves Surface Like Skin” (Terrapin Books, 2017) and two poetry chapbooks.

Pharmaceutical

By Michelle Menting

To draw blood from a mouse,

first alcohol the tail. Get it wet

and bare—the liquid does this,

plasters hair to lucid skin.

The tail becomes cordlike

or remnant of cord. It whips,

all three to four inches whip

against your latex glove.

You can do this

one-handed: hold the rodent

down, insert the smallest needle

and extract. Or push. Inject

happiness, clear skin, smooth cuticles,

or erections for 85th birthdays.

With a cage of six, you’ll practice.

Wield your syringe like a weapon. Draw

blood, insert saline. Practice

on more. Soon, you’ll graduate

to rat gavage, to birth control

for beagles, then learn the P’s & Q’s

of chromosomal X’s & Y’s.

You’ll get promoted

to lab-coat status

for liquefying immortality.

For encapsulating everlasting love

in tablet form.

 Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is a poet who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2010 Michelle Menting. It appeared originally in Opium in 2010, appears in “Leaves Surface Like Skin” (Terrapin Books, 2017), and appears here by permission of the author. For an archive of all the poems that have appeared in this column, go to www.pressherald.com/tag/deep-water.

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