Leveler Poetry Journal
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What the heart is


The heart is a triangle.

With one fewer side, the triangle becomes an opening door.

The door can close into a line.

Is the heart a path when emptied of blood?

The heart is a hallway.

Or panopticon.



As in a tree, from which every other artery travels.

A tree breaks into triangles (leaves) and hearts (leaves).

Sometimes hearts are carved into trees. (By who?)

But these are not real hearts.



Who are the three balances in the balance?

How does a triangle flatten.

Is it self-sustaining.

Does it take sides.

The heart is rounded, all walls smoothing into a drum.

A drum will sound more or less hollow depending on where you strike it.

So the heart drops its thinning noise.



When the sky is cold, the leaves fall, which makes the tree or heart cold too.

The leaves grow red in the cold.

The scare goes out of them—not the blue.

Which one stands at the triangle’s point?

The spear of a heart.

The same doped liquid moving & moving through it.



A heart is a triangle.

A triangle is a heart.

A heart has smoothed sides, with thick tubing coming out.

A triangle is not equal, except when each side is slated.

Will the triangle level to line?

Does the heart become a vein when it is, for that lubbing second, blank?



Of course the heart can close its door.

Like a shut vein, as in when the wrist is pressed down.

After air, an opened vein will close.

Winds close doors.

So what moves through the heart’s hallway?



– The heart is a live fist

– The heart is a turnaround

– The heart is a name of a room that is moving



The heart also speaks to a sort of must.

To expansion and puncture the heart sets a life.

When the heart has holes the air can drown it out.

The ground and the sky are against this.

Then the heart lets the song out of its room.



The repeated triangle opens a wall up into

I mean in this light the heart seems very obvious:

   The heart is some kind of frog.

Or in the throat of a frog a balm films over.

The heart in crackles holds no water and not even its own water.



I want the threat of balance, the stear set at center.

In the spinning cable is some truth of story.

The heart’s triangle is carried through long clouds.

Draw me out by this water.




Anne Marie Rooney