Self Portrait of a Tidy Listener

Devi K. Lockwood

I have a heart as wide as the Mississippi Delta.
All sorts of things grow there: cotton, peanuts, 

pigweed. Sometimes I have to fly through
with a big spray of Roundup just to get rid of it all. 

My heart is too big to shop at department stores.
My heart goes out dancing with no shoes on. 

I plow your neighbor’s fields. 
Don’t you recognize me? I get wet and cold 

and shriveled waiting under your porch. 
My heart lunges at your heart with a plastic knife 

in self defense––
as if that could do any good. I want 

to plunge deeper, to twist your skin into what it is:
cells and a little wind of music. Electricity. A river, 

how we dance into one another at low speed.