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Traffic of Creations

                                               Riddles about the flesh.

By |Posted Tuesday, July 23, 2002, at 4:06 PM ET

  Listen  to David Gewanter reading "Traffic of Creations."

I. Frozen Margarita

Meeting monthly at Pizza Hut
the CryoGenic Support Group
talks the new technology, how

someday a sleepless
gearhead Dr. F
will cure their deaths,

regenerating the whole,
now diseaseless body or
(for the economically

minded) just
the blanched, nitrogenized
head, severed and preserved—

Tonight it's the poor
who live best, their
dispensable torsos

fatted like Balzac:
head-only Harry
orders pepperoni,

double cheese,
and stout;
but for full-body

Bertha the flesh is a temple,
rigid debutante waiting for
its white-suited date:

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David Gewanter's is author of two books of poetry,In the BellyandThe Sleep of Reason. He teaches at Georgetown University.

Clickhere to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.To submit poetry to Slate, send up to five poems and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Robert Pinsky, Slate Magazine, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215.