Heartworm Poem by gershon hepner

If earworms are jingles one cannot forget
because they impinge on the brain like an iPod
then you are the heartworm I keep as a pet,
not a cat, not a dog, but a bicuspid biped,
one cusp that is pointed to words that create
the songs that with resonance ventricles beat,
the other that points to a gate that’s not strait
when I worm my way into your heart-throbbing heat.


Written for Linda on June 28,2006, the morning before my flight to London en route to the ISBL meeting in Edinburgh, where I will read my paper “The Concubine of Gibeah visits Sodom and Gomorrah: What Transpires? ” The Today show had just taught me a word that was new to me, earworm.

6/28/06