Six geese a laying, out of season

This is my take on the anatomically correct trend that swept lit arts last year. Mostly for Nikki.



The Anatomically Correct Love Poem

And you tell me that my heart will beat two billion times in my life
each beat an event as surely as the day
that the first amphibian looked at land with some kind of hopeful aspiration
is a red letter day on some god’s calendar.
Think about it, you tell me.

lub
Your first breath is demarcated by the right atrium gasping for oxygen depleted blood.
Your mother cries with relief

dub
Your nineteenth custard that summer on the boardwalk in Atlanta, before it burned down.
The right ventricle exhales drowned blood into your lungs and you learned how to smoke
that summer.

lub
Your first cliff dive. The Illinois river. Your toes, the edge. The light, the blue.
Your surrender. The left atrium swallows blood.

dub
Your failure, the last time you try to remember your son’s name. Your synapses struggle
valiantly, like an old Lab struggling to stand. Your left ventricle releases blood, still hopeful.


Everything moves in cycles and systems, you tell me.
The smoking instructor made your son,
the blood that began in your bones moves your legs to break them.


The heart is a muscle the size of a fist, you tell me.
Keep on loving, keep on fighting.