The heart has to come completely

out of the body.
Lift now, hold now–I could explain

myself better.
The smoldering wires before

the house fire.
The growths that grow back,

grow back
at even the cleanest margins, at the threshold

of the tree line. 
The body is a lie.

If I were to say 
a copse of, does that mean anything,

further the number 
of burr holes in the Ash tree as it loses limb

and limb–O Emerald
Ash Borer, your jeweled metastases,

your larvaes’ serpentine
feeding galleries. If I say the lakes here

look like fingers,
and the patches of milfoil, myrio,

meaning ten thousand, 
meaning too many to count, spread

like the exanthem of disease–
But in this painting by George Boorujy

a blue jay is “anting,” 
sitting and spreading its wings

in the dirt, 
letting ants crawl up into its feathers

to eat the mites. 
As in one infestation

can cure another. 
I am a pioneer of the artificial heart.

A garden hose
with too much pressure

shooting through.
Fever of unknown

origins.
The body of the lake

a body all around me
tingling with milfoil. There is no cure.

I want to unstory this story,
patent this invention, this pump

of doubt.
My pill-box heart, wooden arms

and legs,
spasms in the limbs:

electrified marionette 
of hospital gauze and desire.

I begin to empty of blood. 
The heart valves, little lub-dub mouths,

they snap shut.