Ghastly Tales and Hearts That Won’t Burn
Plans, a poem, and a present (for you!)
It’s officially April, Friends, and as it happens, this month is also National Poetry Month! I don’t need the calendar to dictate when I dedicate head and heart to scribbling verse and speaking words aloud that thrill me, but I’m nonetheless grateful for a dedicated season during which poetry of all kinds gets to enjoy the spotlight a little more. I’ve got some fun things planned for this space this month, including sharing a slew of poems (both old and new), reflecting on some of my favorite poets and their work, and a surprise or two that is still in the works. It should be a festive few weeks in this small corner of the internet, and I’m grateful you are here!
As if it were planned, I visited the Emily Dickinson this past week, and though this wasn’t my first time wandering the quiet, sundrenched spaces in which Emily composed nearly 1800 poems, my return to the house in Amherst, Massachusetts sparked loads of creative ideas, connections, and conversations with the lovely colleagues and friends I had the pleasure of visiting the Dickinson House with. I’m still sifting through my reflections from this second visit, and can’t wait to share in this space in the coming weeks.
As for today, I’m sharing one of the poems I’ve gotten the most feedback on from my latest poetry collection, Take Me to the Thin Places: a poem titled Ghastly Tales and Hearts That Won’t Burn. I shared a recording of me reading this poem in the backyard of Orchard House back in June, if you are interested in watching, but have never offered the text here on Substack, and am delighted (after several requests to do so) to be doing that today. If you are interested in reading some background about the inspiration for this poem, the absolutely remarkable Mary Shelley and her gothic tale of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, you can head to this past post where I share the AMAZING origin story of Frankenstein, which, in turn, is the origin story for this poem. Admittedly, my poem is a bit of a Frankenstein itself; I’ve taken lines from Frankenstein, Percy Shelley’s poetry, and Shakespeare’s King Lear and stitched them right into the stanzas. (Bonus points if anyone can spot a Beatles reference tucked into the lines as well.)
Lastly, as a special offering for National Poetry Month, I’ve created some free downloadable phone wallpaper backgrounds featuring a few lines from Ghastly Tales and Hearts That Won’t Burn, just for you (below the poem). I was so tickled with the positive feedback I received on the first round of phone wallpaper graphics I designed last year - many of you wrote to say that you were not only using the images for your phone backgrounds, but that you had printed them out and were posting them up on bulletin boards in your own creative spaces or printing them out as bookmarks. This makes me so happy to hear!
As always, I hope you read something you love, and if you are so inclined, that you share this free post with a friend.
Have you read the full Take Me to the Thin Places collection? Please consider taking a moment to leave a review on the purchasing page (of course, there is no pressure!), which helps new readers to find my work in the sea of infinite words available online. Thank you for considering!
Ghastly Tales and Hearts That Won’t Burn
Mary bade goodbye to her babe
and her sorrow was such that
even the sky cried hail
in that sweet sixteenth year
of the newest century
without a summer.
Summer should scald, yet
when one’s body becomes a portal
for life
and for leaving,
May tends to shiver
not simmer.
“Where wert thou, mighty Mother…?”
when flesh flickered
so quickly that it was barely there at all?
Like Victor,
Mary kept all the pieces of what could never be unbroken,
heedless of the cuts the corners might make in her muscles,
and risking a bleed,
she sutured them together into something new,
gorgeous and frightening
(as being alive tends to be).
What becomes of the people,
the things,
we cannot pry our fingers from?
The June storm rages, blows.
What will you resurrect to pass the time,
and see how you might frighten proud men
into sharing the main course with you,
a woman?
If woman’s wounds could resurrect the dead,
heaven would be empty and all our beloveds here.
I am still waiting on a trembling
great enough
to trouble the ground
and
grant me the chaos
I need
to conjure forth a future in which people past
stand like live wires and
whose chests beat with
hearts that will not burn.
Oh, Mary -
I’ve spent my life toiling to make a machine to extinguish
“the miserable monster whom I had created”
before I knew what it was that I was building.
What surgery would be required to rid me of all the horrors
lodged in the corners,
and bridge the gaps between
who I am
and who I could be
and who you never were?
Mother Mary,
if only you would consent to cobbling
me back together again-
not good as new,
but at least stuffed with courage this time,
enough that I might frighten the crows
who will come to pick at my remains
without knowing,
caring,
how they impose their hunger
upon me.
Oh, Mother Mary,
please make me
“…fearless, and therefore powerful.”
I promise to misbehave.
Oh, dear August, I would gladly accept snow
if it means
an everlasting spring
is soon to spring from all that has been lost.
Yet we are not allowed to know the weather
and
thus must choose
where to plant ourselves in the dirt
regardless of what might be blowing in from the East.
Even now my back aches
and my eyes shimmer with soon to come sleep
and I plant passion
and weed words
and splice slices of my own heart
in ways that I wish could be as filling
as you are hungry,
yet I fear I fail at fashioning a Frankenstein of my own -
the nuts and bolts and bones and skin
lay limp within the surgery,
wasted under my not quite skilled enough hands,
waiting for a maker more masterful
to make something of the mess.
Will we open our eyes to the ghosts who haunt us,
and refusing to hunt them,
host them instead?
Might you teach
even me
to beware of electrifying what has been lost
lest it calcify
and lend weight to what once was light?
Maybe flesh was never meant to be zippered together,
even with good intentions.
What we create, we cannot control.
Perhaps, this June,
an oasis in the midst of a year full of winters,
I might still bask in the gold
and make meaning yet.
Maybe Mary did right in piecing peace together, any way she could.
Maybe we would do right to do the same:
make mosaics of all the pieces of our hearts that have shattered
so that their edges can find a way to fit together
without hurting the holder,
and the light shine through, translucent and eternal.
When all has been dissected and disjoined,
may I still be the safeguard
of your heart,
wrapped first in poetry
and then in my palm,
to sleep for always, deep within St. Peter’s?
Perhaps, I think, there is more than one way to mother a monster.
