The body’s heart moves blood,
lives within a cage thumping.
Red/black slave camps stalk wife and husband,
poach their will while
brutality bleeds behind their lids,
haunts visceral cantorial melodies.
Within balanced chambers the harmony:
current double-pumped
into and beyond right
to bounty, back and out.
Heart wears an arterial crown.
Their crowns have nascent thorns
grown from tortured sorrows, unvoiced screams,
the weight of dust-bones borne on their backs.
Beat, beating, beat, beating, beat, beating contracts,
propels blood, squeezes precious chambers small.
Relaxed cavities gorge,
valves alert and thorns
clump, dig root-deep in fleshy fallacy.
Steadfast they deny further fascist triumphs:
elect to dance instead of keening,
generations over annihilation.
Blood-river stagnant, pump
failed, body pleads.
Her heart attacks, stabs through bars —
her delicate ribbed cage. It blades.
Too much, she says. Let me go.
His body trembles, mourns her silver song.
He shuffles forward following blood’s pulse.
Crimson blackness morphs and moves,
taunts his tender strength, the yearning ––
Halts.
Milky palms gather the sparks.