Limb Factory
1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me
down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, 2 And caused me to pass by them round
about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. 3 And he
said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest.
—Ezekiel, Chapter 37
Despite
the seeming
singularity of the fetal
sonogram—
the wonder, or
despair,
at a murky,
undeniable first,
an avoided,
or longed-for,
windfall last—
perhaps all
of it has been
like this
mass production,
an assembly
line, the demand
a given,
though more,
in this place,
in times of war:
the industry of it
a study
in loss,
and the argument
against it,
the physics
and engineering
of what
moves, recovers,
resists, and follows
the body’s
original order,
the flux and give
of a gathering
of dust
reproduced piecemeal—
a room for arms,
legs, someone’s
specialty
the knee,
the foot, someone’s
the hand. And
perhaps such
survival has always been
part conjure,
part clinical,
the muscle twitch
of quickening
a fashioned thing,
interchangeable—
abject this remembrance,
not begotten—
made. 
Irene Virga Salafia
Limb Factory
The Ocularist
The Opposite House
