Making Ethical Creatures
BY LAURA MADELEINE WISEMAN
Lecture: The Heart of a Man
New York, 1878
The night begins
in velvet. A sash
caresses my curves.
My hands
sweep up
eight hundred eyes.
In June’s heat
gas flames pulse
I say, Look to the heart.
In Booth’s Theater
a chart presses
against the stage.
Two ribbons label
my creation: the heart
of a man, shaped
like a vulva
surrounded by down
clouds and light.
My voice blazes,
I have come here
to make this
my field of labor:
the heart
and what it holds.