By Jacob Taylor
On the eighth floor of a clinic,
a medical technician sucks 155 units
of neurotoxin from a small glass vial
into four long syringes. A neurologist
injects her patient: forehead, scalp,
shoulders. 31 times, she stabs her patient
patient’s nerves and dabs the blood away
with sterile stringy gauze. Migraine dissipates
as miracle poison severs the connection
between nerve and muscle.
The first recorded outbreak
came from blood sausage, a delicacy.
They named the bacteria after botulus—sausage.
After ingestion, c. botulinum produces
a neurotoxin that paralyzes:
fatigued and weak, they slurred speech
and vomited blood sausage with bile;
they lost their bowels, their legs,
and finally their lungs. C. botulinum
then crept into the tin-coated iron cans
cooked and sealed, growing as food festered,
oxygen-free, for c. botulinum does not breathe
like us. They declared canned food a hazard,
recalled white beans, corn, sliced olives, herbal drink.
WWII: men boasted of cans of botulinum capable
of killing entire armies. Rumors spread of plots
to send prostitute assassins with gelatin capsules,
seeded with botulinum. Tested on donkeys—immune
to botulism (reportedly)—the capsules never killed. Then, cults
created aerosols to spray in the faces of opposition,
an unpredictable airborne neurotoxin. Now neurotoxin
harvested from c. botulinum, refined into units of miracle
poison, is injected into muscle. Billboards say
it’s a girl’s best friend and make your skin great
again and problem: facial lines and wrinkles.
Pharma grows its newfound delicacy, and it sells,
and the memes of botched botulus clash with memes
of side-by-side comparisons and before-and-afters.
Still, they come back for more.