Sleeve of Hearts

 “And I hope by the end of this book, your heart beats on this sleeve with ours.”

Lindsey Goddard, Editor, Curator, Weird Wide Web and, of course, Sleeve of Hearts

This warming sentiment is the last line of Ms. Goddard’s introduction to the chapbook Sleeve of Hearts. I know her well enough to know she means it. Even if I didn’t, I could have seen it through all of the videos she made in promotion of the book—no one puts time like that into anything but labors of love. The care she used curating the book was akin to Parvati’s incubation of Shiva’s children. It was very delicate—after reading it, I can see why. Every poem in this book is a soul hook, each line written not only by someone who can paint with words but by someone who fucking means what they say. And you can tell when you read it. The pain is in the subtext—pain, dismay, love and despair, faith and desperation…but the content is also brimming with a strange hope, the hope that the authors will be heard.

Have you ever felt the chilling innervation of a spectral memory? Been compelled to take the hand of a ghost? Alison Armstrong may have. Her poem is FEAR—cold and striking, especially if you’ve ever seen a dead loved one. This poem made me think of my dead grandmother and how, for reasons I won't explain here, I wonder if she isn't still around and affecting my mother. Now, my own lack of sanity is not lost on me, so I don't know--I certainly do wonder.

Jason Morton’s A New Face, A New Me is a short, cutting vision of a man being torn inside about by the inner workings of his psyche, whose concerns are of a type I understand. The poem is not posh—it is brutal—and that’s why I love it. It's always refreshing to read something that is written as if to say, it's like this, man. I respect and appreciate that a lot.

Dawn Colclasure’s Don’t Be a Jerk reminds the more fortunate among us that people with scars on their faces, well, they also have feelings. I have scars on my face. I’m pretty insecure about them. But they are there…I can only imagine, and shudder while I do, what it must be like to be deaf, especially in today’s world of internet trolls and incels. This poem says to the ableist—this is how it feels. Don’t be a fucking dick. *paraphrased* People have trouble putting the shoe on the other foot. Here’s to the hope that it isn’t always that way. Sometimes, I sit and think of what it must be like for others to feel what they feel, and it swells my heart. There's a huge group of people in the world today who ought to try that as an exercise and see what happens. Thank you, Dawn, for your brave honesty. May the world learn a little damn consideration for others.

Pixie Bruner’s 37 happens on a gloomy day—not that it says so, it just does. It’s not the pretty part of the Cinderella story, it’s almost cynical, written like a reverse love song. Love is a trapped spirit here. As an added bonus, there’s a very interesting use of the number 23 for those who understand its esoteric significance. I have to wonder if ghosts do that…and do they write? Do they indeed?

Wildfire from the Stars comes from Kasey Hill. Regret becomes a charred home. Perhaps this isn’t a real house. It’s the temple built behind the sternum, in the heart, just above the place where all particular nerves congregate. I know a lot about those nerves. They burn. What’s left when the flames die? Only the ashes of past audacity.

Megan Guilliams’ Leon is a heartwarming love poem, honest, open, graceful, and sincere. I can’t think of much else to say than that. It’s almost too personal a poem to critique, so I’ll just say that any man would have to hide a grin from his co-workers after reading this one from his wife tucked into his lunchbox while he’s busting his goddamn ass at some thankless clockpunch.

J.C. Macek’s Shadowbox Dancer, hm. I’m not ashamed to say that I don’t have the education to understand all of the references he’s made but I find the whole thing lovely. We are after an onyx pendant…I know a little bit about going after onyx pendants. Not the kind that go around your neck. And with all the vampires, parasites, whores, prisoners, our hero is a shadow boxer brought to his knees. And I can't help but think the pendant is what brought him to his knees. Maybe it isn't made out of stone...     

Why does every high have a low? Lindsey Goddard asks us in her poem, While I’m Still Here. That’s a great question. I’ve loved the moon and breathed in stardust often enough and wondered why it couldn’t last forever…this is not to say geek-made wake-up chips, but the night itself. Just the night. With the right app, you can find any constellation. The imagery in this is exquisite in its simplicity, and I want to make a song out of it, not that I’d presume. As I understand it, the poet is also a musician…if this poem becomes a song, I’d love to hear it.

I want to write about everyone in here.

I want to tell them all how bloody beautiful they’ve made this book, and I don’t mean that in an ironic American-steals-British-slang type of way.

(Though I also do. Which is okay. None of my English friends seem to mind, all three of them.)

How sanguine is this book, how bloody, how dark, how lovely. It has a scent and a taste. The cover, a stroke of artistic genius in my most humble, shows you what you’re in for when you spread the covers and set about licking the contents.

Like I say, sanguine. But hearts are that, aren’t they? They are soaked with blood. If removed from the chest, it wouldn’t take long for you to be able to squeeze pudding from its severed valves. Gloop. All over the table. Lost love like a hook through the heart. Failed attempts at saving broken paramours. Jaded party animals. Growing up too, too soon. Ghosts in shattered glass. Contentment in the dry bowels of raging Hell. Last day free for the killer. Bad men, bad women, Drowning. And wondering whether or not your wife isn’t injectable powder. Indeed, this is a sleeve of hearts that have been removed from the bodies of the authors and set inside these pages to forever beat in a cadence of dry truth. Something like 234 beats per minute with a 6/4 bridge and crunchy 7/8 coda. If you want a look at what love really does to people, Sleeve of Hearts is for you.