Suzannah Dalzell
lives on Whidbey Island just north of Seattle, WA. She divides her time more or
less equally between writing,
restoring wetlands and volunteering in the raptor center at the Woodland Park
Zoo. Her work has been published in
Raven
Chronicles,
Book Women
and
The Seattle Times.
Suzannah Dalzell
Pigs Advance
Pigs advance as organ-transplant factories for people.
Seattle
Times – Oct 22, 2002
Pigs advance: A phalanx of pigs marching forward
through the farmyard, wearing steel helmets.
Dark stormy skies overhead, mud between their toes.
Animal Farm redux.
Advanced organs: Hearts that memorize Milton,
lungs that master Hegel, spleens that ace calculus.
What about underachieving organs that “could do better,
if they only tried harder”?
Organ transplants: Organs that once lived in New York
now live in Seattle where they seek out other transplants.
They hang out in Manhattan style cafes and restaurants,
complaining about the lack of culture.
Transplant factories: Patients lined up feet forward on
conveyor belts moving slowly past masked anesthesiologists.
Once sedated they are shunted in different directions,
their feet pushing open double doors into operating rooms.
Factory people: Women in gauze caps stand in a long line
plucking mutant chickens. Men wielding blood-soaked knives
slash at carcasses hung from hooks. Their arches are falling
from standing on hard surfaces in steel toed boots…
people pigs.
