Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Cardiology” by Laura Cok, which first appeared in Poetry Pause in January 2020.

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Cardiology

By Laura Cok

The murmuring curtain of my brother’s heart

let the wrong blood in, the unsanctified

slipping past to the holiest of holies.

All the church prayed, and I thought: how glamorous,

a brother with a hole in his heart.

I jumped rope for his sake. I bent my ear to his tiny chest.

When he counts to two the image grows clear.

The man behind the curtain has patched it up

and when it grows it will not buckle at the seams.

When I was a child I believed in God and thanked him.

A long time ago. That does not mean it was not a miracle,

the whirr and tick of his mathematical heart.

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Copyright © Laura Cok

Previously published in Doubter’s Hymnal (Mansfield Press 2019). First appeared in Poetry Pause in January 2020.

I’m a writer and editor based in Guelph, Ontario. I have been previously published widely across Canada and work in corporate communications. I won the 2020 LCP Broadsheet contest from the League of Canadian Poets. My debut poetry collection, Doubter’s Hymnal, was published by Mansfield Press and shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert award.

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