Leave it to a medical scientist to get a different take on the heart during Valentine’s Day. Local poet Keith Tornheim goes to the heart of the matter and comes up with something unexpected.

I Would Give You My Heart, But

I would give you my heart, but
it is a bloody thing
and misshapen from the idealized form
by left ventricular hypertrophy
and the usual asymmetry of
sprouting veins and arteries,
of which some on close examination
would show fatty streaks of white
against the proper red,
developing atherosclerosis gifted
by my love of ice cream.

Would you take a ring instead,
round, symmetric, never tarnishing,
plugged only by your finger?

– Keith Tornheim

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