‘The Bitter Harvest’ by Cheryl Corey

With steady hand,  he takes a scalpel, cuts
the body open.  Liver, spleen, the guts
extracted, packed in ice.  The Party man
looks on.  There’s profit to be made.  The plan:
eliminate the Falun Gong and steal
their organs. None will be the wiser.  Zeal
of anti-revolutionary thought
destroyed, the statist foe is rendered naught.

Ms. Corey’s poetry has been featured in Mobius, The NeoVictorian/Cochlea, The Comstock Review, Iambs & Trochees, Capper’s, Time of Singing, and Deronda.  In the 2007 World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets Contest, she placed 1st in the Dylan Thomas Award category and received Honorable Mention for the June Kraeft Memorial Award.  Her short story, The Briar Rose, was selected for Tall Tales & Short Stories, an anthology published in 2014.  She is currently writing a novel.

Featured Image: “Organ Crimes,” Oil on Canvas (41 x 41 inches) 2007, by Xiqiang Dong. Painting description: Chinese physicians and police conspire here in a horrific, though well-documented, phenomenon in China: forcible organ harvesting. It has been called by one prominent human rights lawyer, “a new form of evil on this planet.” This victim, as with so many like him, was not given adequate anesthesia or medical care; his body, in the hands of a cruel regime, is but a collection of profitable parts. The painting is based on actual testimony from the spouse of a Chinese doctor who partook in these acts. Standing back (at right), the doctor pauses, immobile, upon sensing the victim’s humanity: a small Falun Gong pin has fallen from the victim’s pocket in the struggle, along with a note written to his mother, wishing her well. Investigators fear that several thousand Falun Gong adherents have been subjected to this form of unfathomable barbarity. Falunart.org.