The bucket of eyes blinks at us.

We each choose a bauble, carbuncular,

gimleted, unflowered irises, winter

buds winking. We draw from the jelly bean

jar, jewellery that watches us, observing

observers, each to an orb.

This is serious work, scalpeled and

steady, a lesson for lab coats, protocols,

process, we’re not pickling onions,

plucking out pills, we get to

uncover the camera’s sclera.

Somewhere, skulls staring, scooped

like an ice-cream, await

their own indignities, their own students.

Our punneted strawberries,

beetling and beady, are blank to

unpeeling, our quiet unpuzzling,

inexpressive, giving nothing away.

At the end of the hour, they’ll

count them away again, these jellyfish

trailing their tentacular nerves,

though there’s nowhere to hide them,

except in our mouths, pebbling,

pliant, cool as a grape,

a swallow of wisdom.

It’s almost too much for some of

the first years, fainting and retching –

that plonk in the bucket, that

frisson of burley, but

I’m busy chewing.