Heart As Pump
Four pumps in fact - when I was peeling a mango, clumsily,
Taking off too much fruit with each swipe of the blade.
I pulled my mouth close to the dripping fist-
sized globe and fed myself.
It was dim and hot in a room. I felt love was at an angle,
Coming to me around a corner, damp into the wall.
My brother was in the kitchen making preserves, bent
Over the sink and lit by the ambient shine of a small light.
My sister sat behind me, dropping graded papers
Over the arm of her chair one by one, to swing down
Onto the carpet, settling near the cat. One by one they swung
Aloft, then, released from invisible capture.
Really it’s about someone else, someone not in the room.
We have been lingering at the end for so long now.
My body is filtering you out - that slow, heavy momentum
As blood passes through the lungs where it is cleansed.
I saw this while pushing my fingers into mango flesh
And twisting my back to look at them in the room.
I scraped the pit-heart of it with my teeth, not quite quenched.
The heart is enclosed within a fibroserous sac.
Where there is a love drawing in and a love drawing out.
Maybe this is – which one is? -
That longest, strongest, and most important pump.
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