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Ape in My Heart

Text of Poem

Lust stinks in my nostrils
rank odors exhale in my breath,
I roll the stone
to seal the cave’s mouth,
that in darkness rolls away.
I record it on the pages
of my mind, the killed
beasts I continually
resurrect.
Dream pictures are lewd conquests
as if glory wrote its name
between the thighs of
naked women.
Those bones there
gleam in my barbaric twilight
where I threw my brother
to the lions.
I chew and swallow the pages
in a world sick with its virus
and hide where crowds
wander in the labyrinths of
their own predicaments.

First Line
Lust stinks in my nostrils
Original Pub Location
Original Publication Date
2017
Original Citation
Planting Red Geraniums: Discovered Poems of James Hearst. Final Thursday Press, 2017. 21.
Complete Poems
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Hearst Collections
Word Count
98
Manuscript

Permissions to reproduce work from the James Hearst Papers have been granted by the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa Libraries.

Poetic Form
open
Themes