Issa Lewis

This is a Heart

This is a heart-heavy poem, a weight-on-the-shoulders
poem, a pennies-on-the-eyes poem. This is a body
as an over-full vessel, barely contained, walls sodden.
A fight with your brother in the morning
over a board game. An escape from trees that move
in the wind of your mind. A hole in the heart
where ease would let you sleep.
This is a heart
made of string and tape by small hands, hanging
on the wall. A fragile balance a careless hand
could wreck. This is a mother who cannot hold
her son when he rages, cannot smooth the wrinkled sheet
of a hard day. These are hands as blunt objects
without function or finesse. Stones.

This is a heart heavy with prose that wants to be
a poem, thoughts too long for breath. So many pieces.
So many pennies.

Issa M. Lewis is the author of Infinite Collisions (Finishing Line Press, 2017). She is the 2013 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize (Backbone Press) and a runner-up for the 2017 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize (CALYX). Her poems have previously appeared in Up North Lit, Split Rock Review, and Panoply, amongst others.