Bleeding Heart

My heart is bleeding. It bleeds upward and fills

my mouth up with salt. It bleeds because of a city in ruins,

the chair still warm from sister's body,

because it will all be irreproducible. My heart

bleeds because of baby bear not finding mama bear and it bleeds

to the tips of my fingers like I painted my nails Crimson.

Sometimes my heart bleeds so much I am a raisin.

It bleeds until I am a quivering ragged clot, bleeds at the ending

with the heroine and her sunken cancer eyes, at the ending

with the plaintive flute over smoke-choked killing fields. I'm bleeding

a river of blood right now and it's wearing a culvert in me for the blood. My heart

rises up in me, becomes the cork of me and I choke on it. I am bleeding

for you and for me and for the tiny babies and the IED-blown

leg. It bleeds because I'm made that way, all filled up with blood,

my sloppy heart a sponge filled with blood to squeeze onto

any circumstance. Because it is mine, it will always bleed.

My heart bled today. It bled onto the streets

and the steps of city hall. It bled in the pizza parlor with the useless jukebox.

I've got so much blood to give inside and outside of any milieu.

Even for a bad zoning decision, I'll bleed so much you'll be bleeding,

all of us bleeding in and out like it's breathing,

or kissing, and because it is righteous and terrible and red.

Notes:

Note for POL participants: we corrected a typo on January 26th, 2016: "squezze" was corrected to "squeeze."

Source: Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation (Viking Press, 2015)