“Stem Cells”
A new poem by Amit Majmudar
- By Amit Majmudar
- Smithsonian magazine, April 2013, Subscribe
In the hospital’s hothouse,
cardiac strawberries blink on a vine.
A walnut-shell hides a brain rich
in good fat; a lychee’s peel,
a pale eyeball high in vitamin C.
The doctor has good news!
His pharmacopeia has given way
to a cornucopia,
one that spills ovarian grapes
and bananas that promise never to go soft.
A single stem has borne, has birthed fruit
that shall not be forbidden us.
The pomegranate spleen, yea,
the kidney-bean kidney shall be ours.
Splendid! delights a voice
over the hospital PA system.
Splendid, you summer-sweet sons of Adam—
using an apple-seed of Knowledge
to grow the Tree of Life!
No one can say whose voice it is,
but its hiss is like a scythe’s.
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