This is Ruth speaking

Okay, Rachael, I made a few changes, didn't follow too much of advice.  I know, kill your darlings; for Mel, make clear, but what can I say?   I'm too attached to old version?

I may use this for my once-a-month poetry group Wednesday and probably can't print it after that morning fairly early, so if anyone sees it before then, please don't put off commenting.

I rewrote last stanza more than once.  Have more versions, put in the most complicated and the simplest with a little "or" in between.  One better than the other?  I guess I like the sounds of the longer one but the rhythm probably stinks.  I should read out loud a couple of time.  Anyway, here is rewrite number one:

        RESEARCH 
 

She's plump and comfy as a German dumpling,

this issue of the West Rhine with fine flaxen

hair flying behind her like diaphanous

wings as she moves through the mosquito lab.

She pins a female under the microscope,

observes the scalloped abdomen swell until

the insect can't stand on its spindly legs;

it sinks into a satisfied stupor,

ending its whiny buzz and edgy urge to fly.                                       

Now it's time: The student grips her scalpel

and pulls apart the culex, probing tissue

for a mark of dark-stained strains of the West Nile.

Later, in her fevered bed, her lover's

limbs lay her flat.  After she feasts

and her abdomen fills with his fluids,

after glut and gratitude make her legs weak,

he rises and returns to his little family. Then the slump,

the dent in her soft mattress. Sinking in, she carves

stinging scrolls on her arm. In the erupting red,

will she find the radix of this toxic coupling?

or

he rises and returns to his little family. Then

she slumps into her soft mattress, carves

stinging scrolls on her arm. In the erupting red,

will she find the radix of this toxic coupling?