January 1, 2006
Working at the Genetic Testing Center
The voice on the other end of the line wants to know our motive;that is, there’s a long history of social research in the neighborhoods east of the hospital where […]
January 1, 2006
Midwife to the Wiring Diagram
Sequencing and annotating the human genome (International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, 860-921) and those of representative animals, plants, and microbes have given us an impressive parts catalog but only the […]
January 1, 2006
When the Young Geneticist Was Asked, “Aren’t You Worried about the Implications of Your Work?” with a Toss of Her Sun-Streaked Hair, She Declared, “No, Not at All. I Can’t Wait to Fuck a Clone”
O flawed species,who has fashioned spears from saplings,notched points of flint, slicedthe muscular, coral flesh of salmon,pounded tapa from the inner bark of the mulberry tree. Large brains balanced on […]
January 1, 2006
Base Pairs
The genetic information in all living things is stored in DNA which is present in chromosomes. Adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine (A, T, G, and C) molecules make up the […]
January 1, 2006
Genomic Images
Artist Eve Stockton provided The Kenyon Review with the following images in celebration of this special issue on the Human Genome Project. Says Stockton, “Nature, science, myth, and memory all […]
January 1, 2006
The Genomic Tropes of Dickinson’s “The Veins of Other Flowers”
The Veins of other Flowers The Scarlet Flowers are Till Nature leisure has for Terms As “Branch,” and “Jugular.” We pass, and she abides We conjugate Her Skill While She […]
January 1, 2006
Ouroboros
We are both the snake and the wheel. —Czeslaw Milosz Discovered in a New Zealand school’s basement: a colony of garter snakestwelve inches deep, generations rescrawling over themselves within pipe-coiled peripheries, the vital graffiti […]
January 1, 2006
Adamah
My name means:anything made from clay. I was dust until Godbreathed in my nostriland began talking to meobsessively: “This is Pison, the riverfrom the Land of Onyx,these holes are your […]
January 1, 2006
Genomic Vanitas & Memento Vivi
❦❦❦ (Vanitas) Of thy last end, in all thy works, be mindfulthe still life’s legend insists: lyre & death’s-head clock, depetallingtulip & convolvulus-canker, wrought silver candle-snuffer,& fruit flies’ agitated sphere […]
January 1, 2006
Father Gregor Mendel Reflects on Authorial Intent
from THE GENOME RHAPSODIES …I know you are reading this poem through your failing sight, thethick lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning, yet you readon because even the alphabet […]
January 1, 2006
Whale and Bee
Earl called today: another fight with Thelma.Who would doubt it?—evolution wants our marriages unlikely. We’re experiments, in search of furtheralloys of the human genome. Fair enough. And yet their sadness […]