“It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
By Marjorie Maddox
“It is the beating of his hideous heart!”but that was his, not mine. The stress test shows
the underbelly of my heart near dead.
My breath speeds up, the pulsing organ slows:
a horror story worse than ones I’ve read.
the underbelly of my heart near dead.
My breath speeds up, the pulsing organ slows:
a horror story worse than ones I’ve read.
So off I’m rushed into that eerie room.
With knife and tube, the surgeon starts right in
aware of how my father died too soon.
I close my eyes, afraid that I am him.
The beating of a heart? No terror there.
The genes our parents give? That’s worse than Poe.
The death that’s been passed down, the real scare:
knowing from whence you came and when you’ll go.
And then the shock: the diagnosis in.
“False positive!” Let “Nevermore” begin.
Professor of English and creative writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published eleven collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Wipf and Stock, 2018), which received the Yellowglen Prize; True, False, None of the Above (Cascade Books, 2016), which received the Illumination Book Award Medalist; Local News from Someplace Else (Wipf and Stock, 2013); Perpendicular As I (iUniverse, 2003), which received the Sandstone Book Award. Her books also include the short story collection, What She Was Saying (Fomite, 2017) as well as four children’s and YA books—including Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems with Insider Exercises (Kelsay Books, 2020), which was a finalist in the Children’s Educational Category 2020, International Book Awards; A Crossing of Zebras: Animal Packs in Poetry (Resource Publications, 2019), and I’m Feeling Blue, Too!—Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor) (Resource Publications, 2020). She is the Assistant Editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry; and the author of more than 600 stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Forthcoming in 2021 is her book Begin with a Question (Paraclete Press), as well as her ekphrastic collaboration with photographer Karen Elias, Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts). For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com