When I discover I have to dissect a sheep’s brain,

I go down the hall to Animal Behavior and plead my case,

but it’s too late.  I’ll have to pry my way through

the four ventricles, push pins into gray matter and breathe

formaldehyde through a useless white mask.

I hold the brain in my awful hands, make an incision

at the base of the cerebellum, place a red pin

into the pineal gland, a green pin into the amygdala:

here’s where it feels joy, here’s where it feels fear,

here’s where it remembers the beautiful dying stars.