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LIVER

Resolute organ, army general,
springtime thrust through frozen soil,
a fiddlehead fern’s new green.

The liver, controller of sinews, loves
a good stretch, a lap around the park.
Vision blurred, whites shot red,

a drinker’s eyes display its complaint.
Weak liver: no direction in life.
But treat it right and it’ll make plans,

carry them out, raise nipples, engorge.
Anger it and it turns whip, fist, whirlwind,
calls for scotch, chili pepper, deep fried

cheese sticks, anything to ramp up damage.
A fight you pick may be your liver
shouting, that plum pit in the throat a sign

of its need to be slapped down. Don’t
take it personally. Its soul, the hun,
enters you after birth and after

death it flows back and forgets
the wreck it leaves behind—
your rotting meat, gristle, bone.

Marie-Elizabeth Mali

Reprinted from Pebble Lake Review, Health & Illness Issue, 2009, by permission