TULIP AUTOPSY
We open the bulb
the way coroners open silence:
a Y-incision through centuries,
petal-skin peeling back
to reveal the soft machinery
of human delusion.
Tulip Mania lies before us
on cold steel in 1637,
a riot of color once worth
a house, a marriage,
a lifetime; now only a flower
trembling with fever.
The Dutch surgeon -
one hand on his scalpel,
one on a ledger -
whispers,
“This bloom died of futures.”
Under the first petal: lust.
Under the second:
a speculative theology.
Under the third:
fear so pure
it glows.
The ovary ticks
like a time bomb wired
to the human psyche.
We pass it between us:
a relic,
a warning from ancestors
who overdosed
on scarcity and splendor.
The roots are a snarl
of vanished fortunes:
ships sunk under the weight
of impossible beauty,
families undone
by a flower that learned
how to mirror desire.
A ghost petals into view,
asking if anything in this world
has value beyond the stories
we shout into it.
I close the bulb
with sutures borrowed
from a hospital built
four centuries later.
As the sheet falls
over the body,
a whisper rises:
“Every market is a resurrection.
Every crash, a sermon.
Every speculator a pilgrim
searching for God
in the wrong gardens.”
For one brief moment
the tulip glows,
as if remembering
the instant the world
believed in it
more than in heaven.
David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores intersections of history, medicine, economics, spirituality, and cultural identity. He studied philosophy and medical science at Boston University and trained in ophthalmology at institutions including the Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and Harvard University. He later completed an MBA at UCLA, an experience that deepened his engagement with themes of value, markets, and human belief systems.
Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, he now lives in Texas. His poetry has appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, Braided Way, Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, The Orchards, Right Hand Pointing, Unbroken Journal, and others. His current work interrogates modern capitalism, historical memory, and the spiritual cost of abstraction.