Underbelly Lab
The right-side------------------------------------
stairwell will take you------------------->
below the biology lectures to
the underbelly------
with a
narrowly
extending
hallway
dimmed
by the generous spacing
---------of fluorescent bulbs
---------highlighting the walls of zoomed-in mutated fly eye posters,
---------colorless and
---------------captured by scanning electron microscopes.
If you refuse to beware the haunting honeycomb ommatidia
distorted to blindness,
you will approach a
---------lofty
---------elevator refusing to elevate
---------trapping you in,
---------for a beat,
---------until the opposite door slides open
------------------to let you cross the threshold
onto the other side of the sterilized,
stark white life sciences annex,
doors decorated by orange biohazard labels and SDS warnings,
guarded by access codes
concealing the fridges shelved with stocks
of deviant flies bottled into viles,
each frantic to escape
the blur of its wobbling siblings
clumsy to trek upward, overexerting its straw legs
for the scientist has restricted it from
employing the air.
The wildtype fly must see its neighbor in the vile next door
and wonder about its fellow fly
with a rough eye and crinkly wing
fruitless in performing the very function for
which it
is named.
The scientist knows the fly serves as a sacrifice
and devises it with overactive shroom proteins, folding cells into disorder
and disfunction
------------------or the possibility
of controlling the madness
of a neural tube paired with unsuitable shroom proteins
within an ill-fated human embryo
unable to sustain life
in our harsh ecosystem,
------------------and for this possibility,
millions of dew-loving fruit flies
have lived in suffering, and the armies built have
-------------------------------------------------------fallen
some with purpose
------------------------others simply casualties,
yet each death is unseen by the outside world
for fear of a cruel conception.
Here I defy the access codes by
staining this page with the same ink
labeling the mutations on vials
because I see the tightly shut lab gates
directed not at outsiders
but at defending the outside
------------------from contamination
------------------by broken flies, blind and flightless
-------------------------infecting the gene pool
---------------------------------cascading into fly population
--------------------------------------------------------catastrophe
a possibility haunting me
in every encounter with a fly
circling about my eye
-------------------------for maybe I carried it
-----------------------------------------------away from the underbelly
into my reality.
Wing Gallery
I.
The straight wildtype
wing
arches like a seamless sail
lined like veins on a leaflet
and dotted with ordered cells
folded or apically constricted
perfectly well
by shroom protein into a classic wing
without alteration, or modification
allowing swift flight and graceful glides
about the glass vile
but neglected by the scientist
engrossed by mutation
II.
The crinkly experimental
wing
curls up along the edges
like the
browned, folded chip fried to
a burnt crisp at the bottom of the bag
branded with a significantly larger
evolutionary disadvantage
than the straight wing variety
concocted by a factory lab
corrupted by cell machinery on overdrive
folding wing cell sheets
into crimped, crumpled
disarray
III.
The virginal female
wing
Ridged with cerulean blue
Much like the rippled edges of a water
droplet breached by pigmented brush
which strokes gently
Preserving the vulnerable rhythmic inflations
Of the pale white female abdomen
Wielded by an observer of lines, curves,
coloring of a wildtype wing which will
Inevitably mature to grayness
And fall under the forceps
Or funnel into the
fly morgue
Confessions of a fly killer
In a lab, the absence
of a paintbrush’s gentle strokes leaves
fly plates painted with red splotches where
chosen forceps crushed the body
of a female darkened, marking an unwanted encounter with a male
so, she is scraped off the white slab
and gently pushed into
a fly morgue,
which douses each fly in ethanol
where it meets the carcasses of thousands of other floating flies
fixed in the state they were in when they became of disuse for me.
I have peered into my scope for months now and sorted a hundred flies into irrelevance
saving only the virgin females and discarding the males for fear of their sperm contaminating the pool
with offspring of undesirable genotypes.
I have rued my power as the creature larger than you
who mates your parents to determine your birth,
nourishes your embryonic young with buttery yellow cornmeal and yeast,
and sorts you into viles to give you space to climb, fly, and flit.
Only to snatch your glutinous white larvae even before they pupate into a shell,
To prod them as they squirm in a fluid filled well,
To chase the ripples and grip the wormy head in one forceps while tearing the intestines with the other
until the nerves stop firing
and I am left with a lifeless cellophane body,
and the ability to invert the carcass,
to isolate the brain for study.
I have reflected upon my experimental designs created
with the knowledge of your imminent death at my hands
with a goal that rejects the guilt in favor of achieving what it wants:
the knowledge, the knowledge of your proteins.
Dew-loving fly,
Listen out for the screams
Of your fellow flies
Lost into ethanol
afloat
in the fly morgue.
Two Cultures
1.
| Prepare the light weight muslin canvas, stretched across a wooden frame, with diluted 33% starch mixture so paint pigments will bind to ivory, matte canvas | Prepare dainty, opaque fly embryos on apple juice plate with 50% bleach to unravel extracellular chorion layer so stain will adhere to pellet-like, white body |
2.
| Spray and slather on starch mixture spreading with heavy strokes of a broom paintbrush to blend the faint straw yellow stain across the taut linen surface | Swirl and stroke bleach in embryo plate scattering with thin feathery watercolor brush to delicately lift the embryos, borne by the buttery yeast surface |
3.
| Fix up acrylic paint primer tinted with drop of sky blue pigment in an old yogurt cup. Blend and apply paint compounds for a layer coating the canvas with a membrane. | Fixate embryos in 1:1 mix of formaldehyde: heptanes in a clear tube. Shake and replace layers with methanol stripping the embryos of their vitelline membrane. |
4.
| Mix pigments of paint to match shades and tints to hues of the scenic design and add two spoons water to reduce viscosity and create condiment consistencies. Colors will sink separately into palette craters. | Mix antibody stains to bind embryonic neurons and shroom protein separately and add PBT with goat serum to prevent non-specific binding. Embryo antigens will glue onto distinctive antibody binding sites. |
5.
| Paint foliage with 488 wavelength pigment and the sunsetting sky with 568 wavelength. Maintain vibrancy by preventing complementary paints from fusing and dulling the canvas brown. | Pipette lime green fluorescent tags to shroom protein antibodies and crimson red tags to neuron antibodies. Complementary tags will maintain separation between neurons and shroom site results. |
6.
| Meticulously scumble and spatter paint, guided by the thin curves of a pencil drawing, with colors chosen to reflect intended pigment and absorb all others. Take a few steps back from the details of stippled strokes and smudged shading to appreciate the painter’s microcosm cathartically communicated | Microscopically fluoresce embryos stained to emit color allowing the search for colocalization where neuron and shroom stains overlap. Step back from segmented embryos and speckled staining patterns and appreciate the possibility of preventing neural defects afflicting a mother’s human embryo |
7.
| Present to critics and enthusiasts who debate and derive meaning in the quiet and contemplatively wide spaces of a fine art gallery | Present to researchers and students for scrutiny and applause who confirm and contribute knowledge in a crowded research symposium |
Glossary
Wildtype – refers to the phenotype of the typical form of a species as it occurs in nature
Ommatidia –The compound eyes of arthropods like insects, crustaceans and millipedes are composed of units called ommatidia (singular: ommatidium). An ommatidium contains a cluster of photoreceptor cells surrounded by support cells and pigment cells.
Chorion – the outermost fetal membrane around the embryo
Fixate – In the fields of histology, pathology, and cell biology, fixation is a critical step in the preparation of histological sections by which biological tissues are preserved from decay, thereby preventing autolysis or putrefaction
Heptanes – colorless liquid hydrocarbon of the alkane series, used for fixating embryos
Vitelline membrane – The vitelline membrane or vitelline envelope is a structure surrounding the outer surface of the plasma membrane
Fluoresce – the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation
Shade – the mixture of a color with black, which reduces lightness
Tint – the mixture of a color with white, which increases lightness
PBT and goat serum – reduces non-specific site binding and reduces “noise” or unintentional fluorescence.
Complementary colors – colors opposite on color wheel (e.g. red and green, blue and orange, purple and yellow)
Scumble – blending paint from a relatively dry brush onto the painting, leaving behind fragments of color
Spatter – To scatter drops of paint in drops or small amounts by gently hitting the handle of a wet brush
Stipple – the creation of a pattern simulating varying degrees of solidity or shading by using small dots