when my heart has spent its restless quiver

My heart. My heart a black flower. Not that. And is my heart an arrow 

when in the morning it is crowing. My heart, my heart's crowing, 

in the morning there is a blackness to the crowing of my heart. 

If in the morning it wakes you. If the sky is black and then it is not 

black, if the sky travels up from black and then if my heart is too loud. 

My heart is awake. If my heart is awake then my heart is too loud. 

If in the morning my heart is too loud and it wakes you 

and your muffled eyes open and there, there is my heart in the middle 

of the room. Or my heart is at the window, crowing and crowing. 

Then do not touch it but watch it. So when the sky has traveled 

its distance from black and then dark and then not dark and then pink, 

then, when my heart has spent its restless quiver. Touch it. Touch 

my heart so it burns. Turn and lean forward out of the bed, enter 

the room and touch my heart like fire (this black flower, this fever, 

this pitch, this scrubbed clean, this arch of morning, this riding night, 

this black pitch, this fever, this book in the mouth, this bird in the city, 

this siphon, this is prisoning, this fever, this pitch, this mouth 

on the shelf, this bed on the back, this black city, this arch of bird, 

this morning in the mouth, this woman riding night, this pitch 

of fire, this bird from the prison, this shelf of fever, this back 

is not clean, this arch in the chapter, this book in the morning, 

this pitch, this fever, this city's on fire), be fearless, touch me 

and that turning sun 

 

listen to it here 

 

[Anne Marie Rooney, ‘What my heart is turning’, from The Best American Poetry 2011]