POEM

"The Idea Is to Have Hearts on a Shelf" by Maria Terrone
Posted March 17, 2000 · Issue 74

The idea is to have hearts on a shelf.
- Biomedical engineer quoted in a newspaper

In the fullness of time (a decade, they predict)
and money (5 billion, give or take)
and scientists' damned
hard work (the calculation of minds that knew
from the getgo the heart's eternal power
to raise funds, rally even the wary;
in short, its public relations value
over liver, kidney and spleen) -

hearts will beat on a shelf.
It could have been otherwise. Left alone,
stem cells might have chosen
another path, bloomed
as muscle or vein, but were induced
in laboratory light to this - a pump organ
tuned to nonstop celebration.

I picture them in a glass showcase,
labeled, plumped up like a pasha's
rarest pillows. Take one down - carefully, now! -
and feel the satin flutter against your skin,
insistent whisper of a heart wanting in,
the rush of your hidden
city, its roar and raging heat, the wild
dark needed to become human.

Maria Terrone, director of public relations for Hunter College in New York City, has published in such magazines as Poetry, Atlanta Review, Poet Lore, Crab Orchard Review, and Wind, which awarded her poem "In Standard Time" the 1998 Allen Tate Memorial Poetry Prize. In the spring of 1999, she was named a semifinalist to The Nation/Discovery Poetry Prize. This is her second appearance in HMS Beagle."The Idea Is to Have Hearts on a Shelf" was first published in the chapbook Divided Again (The Edmonds Institute, 1999).