Robert Pesich

Taenia solium in Homo sapiens: The Pork Tapeworm in Man 

It inhabits some small spaces at first,
enjoying its new home so much it spreads
from the small intestine to brain to heart,
even hiding from immune surveillance,

cysticerci hitching in the sclera.
Host and guest continue to coevolve,
for ages now. Still, few study Taenia,
its genome and the clues to Homo’s rave

and great migrations from our motherland,
what might have been eaten and how often.
The case “Who Infected Whom”, now revised
using DNA, pardoning all swine.

But here, who inhabits whom, poet or poem
and how do they live in oblivion?




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Robert S. Pesich is the editor for Swan Scythe Press. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, Slipstream, Skidrow Penthouse, Red Wheelbarrow and Círculo de Poesía (Mexico City). He was a finalist for the 2011 SLS Unified Contest. In 2009, he was awarded the Littoral Press Poetry Prize and fellowships from Djerassi and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. In 2004, he was awarded an artist fellowship from Arts Council Silicon Valley. In 2001, he authored the chapbook Burned Kilim (Dragonfly Press). A second collection of poetry, Night Sutures, is in submission. He lives near San Francisco with his wife and their two sons.