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The Heart

By Ryan Van Winkle
Poetry•Vol. XXVII No. 3 (Winter 2014)

is a red and blood full thing
a leach trilling in the chest
puffing and blowing

but then there are souls
and russian cities full of those
light as sheets some nights

it seems our bodies lie
upon nothing but electricity
crackling between our atriums

our vast hemispheres, our hearts.
But a heart is only a raw, bloody thing
and our bodies scaffolds of bone. Yet

somewhere still a purr
in our throats when a lip
havers at temple

Ryan Van Winkle
Ryan Van Winkle is a poet, live artist, podcaster, and critic living in Edinburgh. His poems have appeared in New Writing Scotland, The Prairie Schooner, The American Poetry Review, AGNI, and The Australian Book Review. His second collection is due out in 2015 from Penned in the Margins. He was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2012.

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