Emerald Echocardiogram
If the chance comes I’ll take one fewer vice in life.
Lungs smoked in relief & screen-splayed
heart ghastly white
beating interdimensional
if seen through cardiologist eyes. A house
built along the border of two weathers.
I might have wished to straddle that seam:
........................brick stitchline
sewn purple.
My joyous wraith would haunt this hill
long after any home could contain it.
No one even bothered to
ask the body if it had needs
of its own. No one thought to: the tissue
at hand is now handled outside
my skin. Around the back side of rain
I try to listen but please don’t speak
unless I am in miniature
doll form. There I embed
a coin in the garden & wait
for an opening. The sky is still
a paywall. My heart still
grows green with debt.
Adrian Dallas Frandle
Adrian Dallas Frandle (they/he) is a queer fish who writes poems to the world about its future. They are Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Press & Associate Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes. “Book of Extraction: Poems with Teeth” is out now with Kith Books. Find work online at adriandallas.com