Sigmoidoscopy

He who having used the outer light,
can return to the inner light,
is thereby preserved from all harm.
-Lao Tzu

She said an artist would love this,
the gastroenterologist.
What, the entry or the exit?
This Ansel Adams of the anus,
connoisseur of horizonless pink inscapes,
probes, probes, and probes,
blasting air into the tunnel
to illuminate its turns,
the slick translucencies
that wall the creeping capillaries
straining to be purple on my palette.

Doctor, are those yellow spots corn?

No, she answers, this looks terrific,
they're just pieces of fecal matter.

Never did I dream that fecal matter
would highlight the only
film in which I've starred.
Olson, in His Own Colon,
for fifteen minutes famous,
but alone, so alone,
on the outside looking in.

{First published in The Lancet}