CLARE STARLING
Fluid Compartments
The heart is carried
in the body’s sling
lifted to the stork’s high nest
at the apex of aorta and vein.
You walk around in your skin
making coffee, carrying microcosms.
The compartments of our lives
divided by slender membrane.
I’d share your pain in a heartbeat,
see through your eyes,
carry your child
in the lit warm space inside me.
Recall Starling’s Law:
The greater the degree of stretch
of the heart muscle
the greater the degree of contraction.
From the swallowed camera
a soft red light glows through
the stomach wall
to guide the wire.
The heart is tethered
to the diaphragm.
How much we give!
How it beats on.
Clare Starling’s pamphlet Magpie’s Nest won the Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Award 2023. Her poems have been published in journals including Poetrygram, Porridge, Obsessed With Pipework, and The Interpreter’s House. After eighteen years as a Whitehall Civil Servant she is training to be a nurse. www.clarestarling.com
It's not easy getting a book or pamphlet accepted for review these days. So in addition to the regular review section, the One Poem Review feature will allow more poets' to reach a wider audience - one poem featured from a new book/pamphlet along with a cover JPG and a link to the publisher's website. Contact the editor if you have released a book/pamphlet in the last twelve months or expect to have one published. Details here
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