They say the painter Van Gogh
cut off his ear in a fit of tortured
madness and presented it to a prostitute
he might have loved, as if to say,
take this, make of me what you will,
derive my essence from this fragment
of flesh. Again and again we see
the blurred divide between madness
and genius. Think: what if, rather than
relying on endless testing and paperwork
colleges asked applicants for a single sliver
of belly or buttock or breast
mailed overnight in a cooler
and then, along with thousands
of others, fed through
a machine that could distill from it
every drip of ambition
every particle of desire
every tremor of weakness
as if the number of times you decided
to watch Netflix and eat ice cream
rather than study for AP Calculus
was configured deep in your tissues, mapped
in the intricate alignment of your cells.
Sophie Panzer is a history major at McGill University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in carte blanche, GERM Magazine, Inklette, The Veg, Yiara, Teen Ink, and YARN (Young Adult Review Network). She enjoys musicals, long hikes, and friendly arguments.