Alva’s Anatomical Heart
Veined like a foot. The size of a fist,
it hammers at the pulpit of her body.
She is sleepless when it folds and refolds blood
like a nervous woman checking again the numbers
of her boarding pass, all the gates in sight.
It, too, paces uneasy hours. Reveals too much
through thin walls. Diverts itself with an arrhythmic
beat. A whirring machine in the mine of the body.
Sometimes it sings a silent, canary-throated song,
and sometimes is made of blood and muscle.
Alva’s Anatomical Heart
Veined like a foot. The size of a fist,
it hammers at the pulpit of her body.
She is sleepless when it folds and refolds blood
like a nervous woman checking again the numbers
of her boarding pass, all the gates in sight.
It, too, paces uneasy hours. Reveals too much
through thin walls. Diverts itself with an arrhythmic
beat. A whirring machine in the mine of the body.
Sometimes it sings a silent, canary-throated song,
and sometimes is made of blood and muscle.
Creature, Wing, Heart, Machine
Alva’s Anatomical Heart
Veined like a foot. The size of a fist,
it hammers at the pulpit of her body.
She is sleepless when it folds and refolds blood
like a nervous woman checking again the numbers
of her boarding pass, all the gates in sight.
It, too, paces uneasy hours. Reveals too much
through thin walls. Diverts itself with an arrhythmic
beat. A whirring machine in the mine of the body.
Sometimes it sings a silent, canary-throated song,
and sometimes is made of blood and muscle.
