Pat Borthwick
Pre-op Check
I have taken my heart from the bin.
They had crumpled it up.
It had not read well.
At first, its pattern was firm,
beating the bounds of its landscape,
a heart going places,
a trustworthy heart.
Then it stumbled,
drowning its mapwork in ink.
Now the junior doctors are huddled.
They unmesh me from red and blue wires
and are blowing the dust
from stethoscopes slung round their necks.
Thick books lie open
at pictures of hearts,
sections of hearts, closer close-ups.
They are speaking of murmurs and holes.
Of hooking me up again.
Which they do. I am slithery with gel.
They crowd round the printer,
tear off a length of my heart,
turn their backs, speak in whispers,
point with pens at black peaks and troughs.
My heart fills the room, riding a paper snake.
It coils on the floor, across trolleys and sinks,
loops round the blu-tacked notice above my head,
ECG out of order. Try room 11 instead.
Page(s) 3
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The