Tag: heart

Three Poems by Sarwa Azeez

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The Unsung

There is a song for everything,
even for an anthill crushed
beneath a passing boot.

But its story cannot rise in song
the way a bee shares her odysseys
with wax-faced sunflowers.

There is a song for my body, too.

I received the lyrics
from my surgeon:

asymmetries to be lifted,
war scars reconstructed.

There will be stitches
to soften the trauma,

but the aftermath
can never be
fully reversed.

I sing the words back
to my therapist

There is a history for everything,
she reflects.

Some lines
are buried within,

but the body knows
mysterious ways
to rehearse them.

I nod and wonder:

Someday the mirror
will draw out
the softest angle
of my face.

*

Tunnel Vision

They say
they found a mass.

The MRI technologist
calls me into the room,
asks where I’m from,
whether I support
this new war.

Then he turns
to the student.

“I told you—
only here,
or on TikTok,
will you meet
every kind of person.”

The contrast
will enter your bloodstream
so we can see
more clearly.

He gently slides me
into the tunnel.

Don’t breathe.

Suddenly
I’m back
under another ceiling.

Another voice.

Another
don’t move.

The commands
are unchanged.

I hear the gunfire.

They can see through me now.

I am a body
where
a mass of lives
came to rest
before the earth.

*

Homebound

The train reminds me
of my heart.

Not because
both have chambers
stitched together
by veins,
wires,
and currents—

but because
both are crowded.

The train
with passengers.

My heart
with the selves
I have buried.

Every chamber
a platform.

With every beat,
I look up,

waiting
for one of them
to step back in
and call this place
home.

*

Sarwa Azeez is a Kurdish poet, essayist, and Fulbright scholar. She holds an MA in English Literature from Leicester University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of Remote (4Word, UK, 2019). Her poetry and prose have appeared in World Literature Today, Collateral Journal, the other side of hope, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Women Writing for a Change, and elsewhere.

Early Bird by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Early Bird

So glad I got
a good spot

parallel parked
in a secret part of sky

near your heart
(right in front

of the entrance in fact)
waiting for it to open

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton is a Professor of French and Creative Writing at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. Julia has a PhD in French Literature (UNC-Chapel Hill) and an MFA in Poetry (Antioch University, Los Angeles). The author of one full-length poetry collection, three poetry chapbooks, a memoir and a children’s book, she has twice been named Georgia Author of the Year. Her work has also been recognized by the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Atlanta and Paris.

Knowlton is Guest Editor of ONE ART’s In a Nutshell: an anthology of micropoems.

Three Poems by Joseph Fasano

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To the Insurance Executive Who Denied My Heart Procedure

You may not think it is worth it
but at night, in the dark
before morning,
my son lays his ear on my gnarled heart
and tells me it is beautiful music.
He doesn’t fathom
what you did to me,
that you’ve traded our days of playing
for a few small pieces of silver.
All he thinks
is my father’s heart is music.
I hear. I hear. I knew.
Ruler, the children
will outlive you.
I wish you
a long, long life of silences
while dreamers hear the living world is singing.
The one you have denied a life is you.

*

The Reckoning

All your life you’ve tried to prove
your beauty. You have handed over
the locked harp of your darkened heart,
believing love a shelter from immensity.
Alone, in the clothes of old ghosts,
you have touched the face
of the mirrors of childhood
like lakes that hold the gold rings
of the wronged.

Listen. It is time. It is time now.
You cannot live in two worlds forever.
Rise up
and walk the way of changes,
deep through the wilds
of childhood, deep
through the cities of the living,
and tap your hand on the great weight
of love’s door
and say it, say the proof
is useless.
Fall into the arms that hear your song.

*

Lazarus

You ask what death was like.
It was like falling into water
as water.
My father was a dark ship
falling through me,
loaded with plum-wine and honey.
My mother moved the sea of me,
its stars.

I tell you
the new life is permitted.
A hand comes
and lifts you by the fingers,
and there you are,
blinking in the morning light,
the graveclothes falling from your shoulders,
a soft touch saying
start again, start again.
This time be the miracle you are.

*

Joseph Fasano is the author of ten books, including The Last Song of the World (BOA Editions). His work has been widely anthologized and translated into more than a dozen languages. His honors include The Cider Press Review Book Award, The Wordview Prize from the Poetry Archive, and a nomination by Linda Pastan for the Poets’ Prize, “awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living poet years prior to the award year.” He is the Founder of Fasano Academy, which offers instruction in several fields of study, including poetry, philosophy, and theology.

The Heart by Jo Taylor

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The Heart

         –After Danusha Laméris and Ted Hughes

The heart is not a gate.
A door that opens and closes
at someone’s will. Not
automated. Not smartphone-
controlled. It is not a soft start
and stop and could even develop
jerks and skips and flutters over
time. It comes with no guarantee,
and the warning is clear–whatever
happens there, happens.

*

Jo Taylor is a retired, 35-year English teacher from Georgia. Her favorite genre to teach high school students was poetry, and today she dedicates more time to writing it, her major themes focused on family, place, and faith. In 2021 she published her first collection of poems, Strange Fire.

On a hike up the back mountain by Melody Wang

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On a hike up the back mountain

my mother told me a story of a goose
shot down from the sky by a hunter’s single bullet:

its mate, stunned by the death of his beloved,
hurled himself headfirst into the rocks below

at dizzying speed, yielding the hunter two geese —
I can only picture the weight of his bounty that day.

Some of us never know when
just enough becomes too much

exactly how much pressure it requires
to hold a heart in your cupped hands, still

frantic from overuse, cool and slick
with the aftermath of someone else’s longing

*
Melody Wang currently resides in sunny Southern California with her dear husband. In her free time, she dabbles in piano composition and also enjoys hiking, baking, and playing with her dogs. She can be found on Twitter @MelodyOfMusings.

Consumed by Edward Lee

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CONSUMED

Grief consumes my heart,
a cancer devastating
all in its indifferent path,

almost a kissing cousin
to the cancer
that took you from me,
savage and swiftly.

*

Edward Lee’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales. His play ‘Wall’ was part of Druid Theatre’s Druid Debuts 2020. His debut poetry collection “Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge” was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.

He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy.

His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

Two Poems by Jacqueline Jules

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Radioactivity

When I think of Marie Curie carrying
radioactive tubes in the cotton pockets
of her lab coat, admiring blue-green light
emanating from her desk drawer;
how all her research, even her cookbook,
must now be stored in a lead-lined box,
I am reminded that no one,
not even the most brilliant of minds
knows everything.

And it helps me to live
in a world where so many don’t see
the dangers I see; helps me believe
that one day we could learn
to recognize poison and take
the proper precautions.

*

The Wholeness of a Broken Heart

There is nothing more whole than a broken heart. –Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk

What is a whole heart?
One that remembers
how it feels
to be ripped apart.
One that can hear
another heart breaking.

A whole heart does not judge.
It forgives, knowing fear
and frustration rise faster
than reflection.

A whole heart
embraces what is,
without forgetting
what has been lost.

*

Jacqueline Jules is the author of three chapbooks including Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Lowestoft Chronicle, The Paterson Literary Review, Cider Press Review, Potomac Review, Inkwell, Hospital Drive, and Imitation Fruit. Visit her online at https://metaphoricaltruths.blogspot.com/