Rule 6: Don’t Fuck with the Pancreas

Dance around it, new surgeons, like the delicate

liver or ovary of the Japanese fugu:

My lover ate seven courses of the deadly blowfish

one summer night—sashimi, roe, salad once

the spikes were out. With no known antidote,

the first symptom’s a tingling in its victim’s mouth,

an intoxicating numbness. Prepared live,

scalpeled thin with special knives and petaled

into a chrysanthemum, the funeral flower on a plate,

these puffer fish secrete their own apocrypha,

which, young anglers, will become your pillow talk:

taped mouths scream on the slab, skin winces

at the first slice. But you’ll also learn some truths:

once removed the poison parts are locked

inside a metal box, scraped into a barrel

at the fish market, and burned. And the bodies

of the blowfish? They’re preserved into lanterns

lighting the sidewalks. They’ll follow you home.