What I Know about the Heart |
Don Narkevic
A tin man will dance for one,
fight a flock of flying monkeys,
shed rusty tears, let it break for love.
The heart can change
like Superman in a phone booth,
leaving the crowd scratching heads.
In San Francisco, the heart is left
a fragment victim of an ancient poem,
Sappho grieving her empty bed.
Lovers search for a heart of gold,
but Cupid slings his outrageous arrow,
the wound, an eclipse of purple.
The heart can leap, skip and sink
like the Titanic within a beat,
survivors clawing one another.
In the heart of darkness,
stones drop like stones
heavy and final as murder.
Never cross the heart
unless you are ready to die.
Don Narkevic: Buckhannon, WV. MFA National University. Poetry appears in Garland, Hedge Apple, Discretionary Love, Pink Ochre Magazine, and Culture Cult. In 2022, Main Street Rag published a novella of poetry, After the Lynching. In 2024, The Potomac Playmakers produced From Birth. In 2025, the author won the Ziolkowski Poetry Prize.