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The Next Transplant

from The Halls of Vivian Grey by Kate Westfall

/

lyrics

Next time I switch you with each other’s selves,

it won’t be just a bodily exchange.

Your brains will also have to be involved.

It will be more than muscle, lung, and pelvis,

more finding strides and sights estranged.

There will be foreign thoughts you’ll have to solve.


The only part of you that will remain

will be the part that is not physical:

Your personality, your mind, you soul.

Part One of this experiment on brains

will be to find what kind of interval

exists between those parts heretofore whole.


In some ways, difficulty will be lessened

with quicker recognition of the skin

that comes with one another’ memories.

Your clothes will be familiar as your dressing.

you'll know the names of neighbors, friends, and kin,

you’ll have the brain’s collected inventories

from all past training, learning curves, and genes.


How will you, then, react to stimulants?

The other’s acts will be your history.

How will we know the difference between

respsonses based on time’s develptment

and on your dispositions’ switchery?


I’ll run tests for questions such as this

and other points of curiosity

until I’ve been quite satisfied and then,

Part Two will start, and with a special twist

that will maintain your reciprocity.

Your bodies and your brains returned again,


you’ll yet remember this experiment,

and knowing one another with your mind,

you will know an empathy complete.

My final test: Affection or Resent?

Perusing one another’s banks you’ll find

all access to past memories, replete.


Possessing such a private memorandum,

including your most shameful moments, bared,

how will you judge each other outside fusion?

It’s possible you’ll be repulsed and shun

the company that you are forced to share,

but I hypothesize a crossed conclusion:


Such unprecedented intimacy

beyond contrived romantic fantasy,

could lead to default love, from sympathy.

credits

from The Halls of Vivian Grey, released February 14, 2017

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Kate Westfall Mansfield, Ohio

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