Palpitations

Hearts, anatomical and metaphorical, appear in the poetry of Sarah Manguso, sometimes years apart. There is this bit from "Poem of Comfort" in The Captain Lands in Paradise (Alice James Books, 2002)

and what about the birds who die mid-flight?
certainly no stranger or rarer than having
an aneurysm on the trading floor.

which lines come to mind when reading this line from "There Is No Such Thing as Skill" in Siste Viator (Four Way Books, 2006): "Why is the heart broken and not squashed, flattened, or wrung out?"

And so for day 1668
08.07.2011