Poetry

Sultan Kitaz/Reuters

By

Jill Crainshaw

Heart Broken

what keeps a human heart

beating

blood throbbing from

chamber to chamber

breath expanding and expiring

yesterday’s white soccer ball

succumbed

air sucked out

a collapsed lung

lifeless

a friendless thoroughfare barrels

into wizened crossroads

bombs whistle an ashen

tune

the roulette wheel spins

and the barefoot boy

in the too-large orange chair

stares

while we

watch

Jill Crainshaw

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and a Presbyterian minister (PCUSA). Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, Star 82 Reveiw, and Panoplyzine. She is frequent contributor to the Patheos blog, Unfundamentalist Christians. She blogs at drdeacondog.wordpress.com.