by Janis Greve
At the echocardiogram,
my heart is the star, the only thing
on the screen, finally out from beneath
the sternum’s specter, lungs shunted off to the wings.
Not once does the technician ask how I’m doing,
her hard-nosed profile cleaving the room,
at odds with the puppies on her smock,
as my body, all edges and corners, plots
its bony revenge. But this really isn’t about me,
it’s about turning my head a hard left
to behold what’s there on the screen,
though boredom already buckles
my bra, walks my feet toward the exit door.
I’m no doctor, nor do I play one
on TV, but what I see, finally see,
doesn’t need fixing, it’s my utterly
ordinary heart, doing what it’s done since before
I took breath, never requiring my bidding,
never expecting anything in return,
its purpose to be forgotten,
erased and erased and erased.
No, this isn’t about me,
it’s about letting awe pool in,
bursting the chambers with astonishment,
springing leaks in the high-fiving valves.
It’s about love, duty being boundless
and this technician with a puppy
in her somewhere.
Janis Greve teachers literature at UMass Amherst, specializing in autobiography, dis/ability and literature, and service-learning. She has previously published in such places as Red Eft Review, The Florida Review, New Delta Review, The Berkshire Review, and North American Review, and has poems forthcoming in Litbreak Magazine.
Emerge Literary Journal 