Medical Textbook: Image Series

by Rebecca Givens

FOREGROUND:
left MCA       T2 image
white space engulfing the screen

flooding through the sulci
oceanic fissures

BACKGROUND:
woman’s head (palest painting)
lips varnished into brown

eyebrows sculpted into tiny
dignitaries      face a raven

on a rock       a middling sphinx
      orange pith

bird’s-mouth-pierced
inside her elephantine ear

FOREGROUND:
honeycomb sinks down
to a warmer science bees

find pockets of liquid
that refuse       queens go on

producing       drones stutter
and fill themselves        as

stomachs swell       biology reveals
its footwork     fainter emblems

blurred patterns in human hair