My heart sliced itself open so that you might inspect what it contains.

My heart has a plan: all the sugar, twice the caffeine, and a jolt to shed its physical form and become a being of pure energy.

My heart has not learned how to double-jump.

My heart is a gift receipt.

My heart worships thunder—
God’s pulse summoning it home.

My heart stretches itself across a frame—a rotting canvas desiring oil.

My heart—having been called prickly
one too many times—installs transdermal needles,
anticipates its next embrace

My heart despises the label offal,
grows anxious when served chopped liver.

My heart resents the muddied border between itself and host.

My heart savors 4’33”—concert halls made amplifier
for the body’s internal rhythms or, better yet, a living room
made amphitheater—it is an inexpensive date.

My heart--attempting to be more goth--drained its chambers of blood; & now, it is very thirsty.

My heart is the bull breaking the China.

My heart is best prepared with a quick scorching—its charred exterior still pulsing.

My heart sails the ocean
following Poseidon's disregard—
another message in a bottle
seeking a receiver.

My heart swells—
an infection
to be drained.

My heart’s angular framework
hosts—as if it were his job—
each visitor unconcerned
with the commands triggered
by the most simple of gestures.

My heart is a weakness—
amputated & buried—
a harbinger warming my grave.

My heart, distrustful of humanity, synchronizes against the atomic clock.

My heart’s guard prays to Michael the Taxiarch.

My heart named itself Jonah
and me, the whale.

My heart re-read’s Ai’s Cruelty,
recalls making a gift of bandages
& why it began writing with blood.

My heart a cappellas
a bass line over its beat
box--a love song flowing
a top the drums of war

My heart avulses veins, arteries, pericardium;
transmogrifies armour out of a contracture
of scars, its precious mewls into a vociferance.

My heart is of star stuff;
it holds the cosmos
within its chambers.

drawing after Ditko
text after Sagan

My heart wraps deflated balloons
around exhaust pipes
to twist the most poisonous
of all balloon animals.

My heart crawls
trailing drool
from its gurgling mouths.

My heart has eaten
the chickens
that were in
the fryer

and which
you were probably
saving
for dinner

Forgive it
they were delicious
so crispy
and so spicy

My heart spells
its name rigidly
as if to belie
its perpetual motion.

My heart prepares the roast
in a marinade of mustard--
stone ground and loaded
with carolina reapers--
all vinegar and heat and flesh.

My heart carries coin
in its mouth for the ferryman
and his tranquil journey.

My heart compresses
the poison of its blood
into a ruby--catching
light in the cracks
between facets.