The Region the Surgeons Named (Perineum)

Lyrics

The gaslight hisses.
Edinburgh, a November evening in 1860.
The air is sharp with formaldehyde and old paper.

Reverend Goss leans over the table.
His brass magnifying glass catches the light.
The book is open to plate seventy-three.
Gray's Anatomy, second edition, 1858.
Leather-bound and smelling of dust.
He traces a line with a clean finger.
A diagram of the floor.
The pelvic floor.

The region the surgeons named.
Perineum.
From the Greek: *peri*. Meaning 'around'.
From the Greek: *inaion*. 'To empty out'.
It's just a space on a map.
A landmark for the scalpel's journey.

Galen of Pergamon knew its importance.
He wrote it down in the second century.
Here are the tools to see it now.
The steel forceps, resting on a tray.
The cold handle of the scalpel.
The basin of water, cloudy with carbolic soap.
The work is clean.
The names are clean.

The region the surgeons named.
Perineum.
From the Greek: *peri*. Meaning 'around'.
From the Greek: *inaion*. 'To empty out'.
It's just a space on a map.
A landmark for the scalpel's journey.

But the map leaves out the people.
The midwives with their unwritten knowledge.
The women in the records, just case numbers,
their pain a footnote to a surgical technique.
The bodies that taught the hands that drew these lines.
Their names are not in the index.

The Reverend makes a note in the margin.
A single Greek word.
The gaslight flickers on the ink.
The diagram is still.
The word is precise.
Perineum.