Meg Kearney


Surprise


Like God, the heart adores a good surprise.
Imagine Eve’s heart, its great leap of joy
when the growing belly did not destroy
that new, young-woman body; it realized
instead that the belly had ceased to rise
as it meant to spill a life, spill a boy,
dear God! Then, in a few years, another boy—
two hearts: one made to love; one to despise
love, though Eve, in her heart, didn’t know this
yet. Cain’s heart was the first to turn to rot.
In Book Two, the birth of Jesus Christ led
to Herod, then Judas Iscariot.
But God won’t guard you just because you’re pious.
(Even the Pope’s heart attacked him in bed.)

No One Is Spared


Even the Pope’s heart attacked him in bed.
No, not all Popes are pious, but John Paul
the First—named for John Twenty-Three and Paul
the Sixth—was called “the smiling Pope,” and said
to be gentle, kind, and open-minded.
Thirty-three days post-election came the attack,
which was more like Lee at Appomattox,
cut off from supplies—arteries that fed
the heart blocked, and so the muscle died, starved
of blood. Yet, unlike the twelve-day battle,
forces that take out a heart need instead
just seconds before a life’s unraveled.
One day you’re whistling; next, your stone’s been carved.

Soup? Still warm when they found Grandma dead.

(from Cardiac Thrill, forthcoming from Green Linden Press)

Also by Meg Kearney: "Heart Quartet"
In the store: The Ice Storm

 

photo: Gabriel Parker

Meg Kearney’s most recent book is All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize for poetry and silver medalist in Foreword Review’s Indies Book Award for Poetry. Meg is also author of An Unkindness of Ravens and Home By Now, winner of the PEN New England L.L. Winship Award; a heroic crown, The Ice Storm, was published as a chapbook in 2020 by Green Linden Press; and three verse novels for teens. Her award-winning picture book, Trouper, is illustrated by E.B. Lewis. Meg’s poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s A Writer’s Almanac and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry series, and included in the 2017 Best American Poetry anthology, guest edited by Natasha Tretheway. A native New Yorker, she lives in New Hampshire and is founding director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Lasell University in Massachusetts.

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