19 Apr PARDON MY HEART by Marcus Jackson
It’s a large, American heart and has hada good deal to drink.
It’s a pretty bad
dancer—too much feeling, too little technique.
It may sing some godless hymns, about ousting
armies of loneliness, about marching
victorious to wives and towns beneath
a heart-colored dusk. Pardon my heart
if it closes its eyes for hours,
whispering rapture over and over.
Pardon my heart if it laughs too loudly,
or if it tells many of its stories
too ardently. Pardon my heart if it rests
an arm across you or your friends’ shoulders—
touch allows my heart to trust that it’s not
imagining your company’s loveliness.
Pardon my heart if you have to kick it out.
After you’ve muzzled the music and brightened
the lights to tidy, my heart will ignore
and keep doing its little two-step, aglow
in the middle of the room, never
happier to have nowhere else to go.
About the Poet
Marcus Jackson was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. After earning his BA at the University of Toledo, he continued his poetry studies in NYU’s graduate creative writing program and as a Cave Canem fellow.
His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications. His chapbook, Rundown, was published by Aureole Press in 2009. His debut full-length collection of poems, entitled Neighborhood Register, was released in 2011, and his second book-length collection, Pardon My Heart, was published by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press in 2018.
Marcus lives with his wife and child in Columbus, Ohio and teaches in the MFA programs at Ohio State and Queens University of Charlotte. He read with Kazim Ali in Just Buffalo Center’s Silo City Reading Series in 2018.
Related Event
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- The Canisius College Contemporary Writers Series will present a reading by and question-and-answer session with Marcus Jackson at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21 in The Grupp Fireside Lounge of the Richard E. Winter Student Center, 80 Hughes Avenue Buffalo, NY 14208. Jackson’s books will be available for purchase and signing from Talking Leaves Books. The event is free and open to the public.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.