The Figure Going Imaginary by Marianne Boruch
MFA poetry faculty Marianne Boruch’s hybrid memoir, The Figure Going Imaginary, was published in March by Copper Canyon Press. Read an excerpt below.
The Figure Going Imaginary
Back to the tables. One group is suddenly friendly—two students working together, two of the foursome on the thick-skinned guy.
Wanna see what we found? says one. He’s excited, tells me to place my hand on the scapula, feel its top edge—the “spine”—and its angled sides. Down then, to the split triceps where tucked into the split is the huge radial nerve which “innervates” most of the complicated fierce and delicate moves of the arm. Sensory response too, I imagine. It’s white and thick. In general, one of them tells me, you can feel arteries and veins—they’re round (and here he inserts a tiny probe into one to prove that fact), and nerves are flat. But the radial nerve is so large, it appears round.
The other guy disappears for a few minutes to visit the other three tables and see their progress. Returning, brightly he: Wow, I feel like I was doing rounds: Hello, Mrs. Robinson, and how are you this morning? Oh, not so well, I see….
I like these two.
These bodies that are so still, so endlessly receptive, taking it , taking it…. But in moving the thick-skinned guy so the triceps can be opened, his lower arm has slipped. It half-rests, half-drops down the side of the table. A sudden very human moment as if he had just adjusted himself, turned slightly in sleep, so pleased with his dream…..
