I have a heart as wide as the Mississippi Delta.
All sorts of things grow there: cotton, peanuts,
pigweed. Sometimes I have to fly through
with a big spray of Roundup just to get rid of it all.
My heart is too big to shop at department stores.
My heart goes out dancing with no shoes on.
I plow your neighbor’s fields.
Don’t you recognize me? I get wet and cold
and shriveled waiting under your porch.
My heart lunges at your heart with a plastic knife
in self defense––
as if that could do any good. I want
to plunge deeper, to twist your skin into what it is:
cells and a little wind of music. Electricity. A river,
how we dance into one another at low speed.