PAGE FROM A LOST NOTEBOOK
It wasn’t a comic rhyme for someone’s birthday, but a serious poem, my first…
………. …two major classes of cardiac fibrillation,
in praise of my brother—then young and strong—sitting hunkered,
………. atrial and ventricular—
over a guitar, beside the campfire.
………. the rapid, irregular, unsynchronized contraction of muscle fibers—
“Jumbled patterns of sparks rising…
………. split or inflamed,
into the lofty nocturnal curtain.” “Lofty,” I wrote, when “high” would do,
………. atrial fibrillation, if not controlled…,
“nocturnal,” rather than “night,”…
………. prevents the heart from pumping…
I wanted a sublime frame for the guitar,
………. the chaotic rhythm, the blood pooling in the upper chambers,
the string sounds, the summer’s end, the sparks that flew
………. forming clots which can dislodge and travel to the brain
like crowds of stars.
Author’s Bio
SARAH WHITE’s most recently published collections are The Unknowing Muse (Dos Madres, 2014) and Wars Don’t Happen Anymore (Deerbrook Editions, 2016). She is co-translator (with Matilda Bruckner and Laurie Shepard) of Songs of the Women Troubadours (Garland, 2000). She writes and paints in New York City.