BOY DIES, GIRLFRIEND GETS HIS HEART
Patterson, Calif. (AP)—A 15-year-old boy who learned that his girlfriend needed a heart transplant told his mother three weeks ago that he was going to die and that the girl should have his heart. Felipe Garza, who his brother said had seemed in perfect health, died Saturday after a blood vessel burst in his head. His family followed his wishes, and Felipe’s heart was transplanted Sunday into Donna Ashlock.
The deep things we know.
How systems grow restless
and damning in us,
stunning the machine.
And what we feel.
The head romances us,
coos anxious wooings,
makes us want to lie back
and listen to the failures,
the bones thinning,
fat clogging the paths.
Outside us, what?
Some opening waiting to scar over.
Some flower peeled open,
its drum growing slow.
And, suddenly, the least we can do is us.
Patterson, Calif. (AP)—A 17-year-old girl, who three years ago received the heart of a boyfriend who died, needs a new heart because her body is rejecting the transplanted organ. Doctors are looking for a suitable heart for Donna Ashlock, who has been living with the heart of Felipe Garza since Jan. 4, 1986. Doctors learned last month that the Garza heart has been permanently damaged by Donna’s body’s repeated attempts to reject it.
this conjured world, this wire,
this battery, this button.
I would rather the suddening stoplight,
the dawned silence.
Beat it backwards, shoot it through
with slivers of glass, chop it from its walls.
Arise it beyond me, make it arc
over my dead head like a heaven.
Imagine the given thing being all you are.
Imagine a machine’s steel tear.
Know how I know this cannot be my heart.
It loves me too much.
Patterson, Calif. (AP)—Donna Ashlock, the 17-year-old girl whose body rejected the transplanted heart of a boyfriend, died Tuesday while waiting for a new heart.
Heaven is a room without air,
tinier than you would expect.
Their harbors summarily discarded,
souls are smashed upon souls,
writhing, lit neon with overwhelms of holy.
Here names, crimes, and choices
are forgotten. There is only one door,
and the harried souls hurtle through,
bargain for space, pulse gleefully.
The fickle, traitorous heart is a need
no one misses. In heaven,
they keep one beating
in a cage, purely for show.