The Sinister Heart

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9

If scientists consider why your heart

Is clothed inside the left side of our chests,

They probably consider genes as part

Solution—or the only reason.  Nests

Hearts find in ribs.  Hearts rhythm out their time

And never pause to think why hearts are there

And not within the right side.  Hearts might rhyme

As well if they were dextral.  They might pair

Up easily enough if they were right,

But they are sinister.  A few are on

The right-hand side, about one in the slight

Chance, one in twelve heart thousands right-side drawn.

  Perhaps you are a right-heart person so

    The prophet’s incorrect about your glow.