Man shaped out of mud
And made to speak and love—
Let’s stick in him a little whisperer,
A bucket with two holes.
Let’s give him the Great Deceiver,
A blood-stone.
A church with a vaulted ceiling
Where the White and Blue Niles meet.
A dog who cries after dark.
Everyone has a heart,
Even the people who don’t.
It floats up like a beached whale in the autopsy.
The heart has no sense of humor.
It offers itself piteously like a pair of handcuffs
And is so clumsy that we turn away.
The past
Is a quarryful of marble statues
With heads and genitals erased,
But the heart is a muscle made of sharkbone and mutters,
Resting place softened with hay
Where all the cows come, finally, home.
from You Darling Thing Find more by Monica Ferrell at the library
Copyright © 2018 Monica Ferrell
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.