Latin from greek; meter: mother, polis: city.
Something very precise

had sawn her almost in two,

and she lay under the green sheet

like a fish half-gutted,
suspended in the amniotic sea

that pumped and pulsed

and breathed for her.
A single white line

measured her equilibrium;

the distance between heartbeats.


A monitor divides the metropolis

into meridians of light,
two lines of pulsating colour

build up around an obstacle;
a telegraph pole,

the wreckage of an ambulance

and the donor’s heart

still vacuum-sealed

and packed in ice


The white line falters

and she succumbs

to the blocked and loaded arteries of her heart

wondering, at the last

if this is what her mother meant

when she said

“I’ll kill you.”