Rushing to the cardiologist down Fury’s Ferry in an Uber
With Eldon listening to Dexy’s Midnight Runners
Belt out Come on Eileen as he slows and half-turns to me
The universal pose for I’m about to ask you a question
To in fact ask me if I know what the lyrics are all about
And I admit ignorance while tapping my feet to the jaunty
Beat of this shiny well-loved oldie but goodie that opens
The door to the early 80s me in Jennie Olson’s basement
Where we spun faster and faster to the urgent horns
Weeks before she moved to Pennsylvania and her brother
Pins me to the Sycamore around back by the empty shed
Midnight after packing the house his tongue spins down
My throat his summer fist feeling up my terry-cloth polo
The one from Lake of the Ozarks Tan-Tar-A Resort shop
To find my private twelve-year-old chest rhythming fear
That night I swore my heart stopped from a swirl of desire
Mixed with disgust and Eldon steers me to his question
Where I’m fifty-three and off to get a boring echocardiogram
Ma’am it’s about the desire to remove her red dress
I chuckle and agree politely that it’s creepy and no one cares
To question familiar things like a best friend’s older brother
Or the heart’s structure because chambers vessels and valves
Clenched into a fist-sized red dress exist to tap and run
Us into existence every morning until something unexpected
From around back tears the artery and splits a problematic flap
I find myself with a stent and follow up with some Dr. Miller
Who unlike Eldon does not show up so it’s Stacy who does
My echo today—Undress from the waist up—half-turned I
Ask how she can read the screen know where to click and drag
For measurements also what are those blue and red splatters
Pollacking about my chest in an iambic jaunt she chuckles
She’s studied the heart for thirty-six years she’s majored
In cardiac imaging that the blue and red are blood cells
From the Doppler just like we see on the Weather Channel
I go quiet thinking of the tiny storms patterned inside me
And ask what she likes about the heart to which she obliges
It’s so small and yet so complex this ever-shifting always
Twisting sexy little pop song of life like adolescence in a way
I offer Stacy who ignores me tapping more keys and staring
At my embarrassing blob of life askew and displayed in gray
