hjerte by Elizabeth Pinborough

if a heart broke once forever would it
not be a dead thing?

yea, a heart is a lively creature, filled
with quiet musings,
subtle thrummings,
murmurous hummings.

aye, she is rapturous and verdant,
swindling common sense
with fictive branches
white with blossoms.

yet, she is the taproot of things,
descending through
the earth warm
with worms, and moist.

nay, she does not die.

(Click image twice to enlarge)

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Elizabeth Pinborough graduated from Yale Divinity School with a Master of Arts degree in religion and literature. She desires to resurrect women’s voices from the past, and through her writing she seeks to create a space for feminist historical and theological exploration. Her poetic journeys include “A Shaker Sister’s Hymnal,” which first appeared in Dialogue and which now appears in Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poets. Most recently she collected a series of essays and photographs titled Habits of Being: Mormon Women’s Material Culture, which is being published by Exponent II in spring 2012. Her credo is, “Snails are people, too.”

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