BIOLOGY

Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Fall 2003 by Hunley, Tom C

means "study of life,"

if you look at its roots,

but Ron Rice, my lab partner in tenth grade,

just wanted to look at

his pot stash under the microscope.

He said he could see

the THC, but all I saw

were red strands roping

around hard green buds

crystals shining like dimes

on a sunlit tennis court.

People liked to call Ron "Rat."

He had a rat-tail in his hair

like the guys in Duran Duran.

He had a turned up nose that twitched

whenever he had an itch, and if

you put him under a microscope,

you'd have seen that

he would steal your jacket,

pawn it to buy coke,

and then help you look for it.

Our senior year, Ron OD'd and died

- suicide

and everyone forgot

that they'd ever called him "Rat."

They eulogized him and cried.

Man, if you were to look

at one of those tears

under a microscope,

you'd see something human

dog-paddling and gasping its last,

and you'd see something inhuman

holding it down, drowning it.

TOM C. HUNLEY

Tom C. Hunley is in his last year of PhD studies in English (creative writing dissertation) at Florida State University, where he holds the Edward H. and Marie C. Kingsbury Creative Writing Fellowship. His poetry has been published in Cimarron Review, Exquisite Corpse, 5 AM, and Southern Poetry Review. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.