Pardon my heart it's a pretty bad dancer

                           by Marcus Jackson

Pardon My Heart

Pardon my heart if it ruins your party.

It's a large, American heart and has had

a 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 yours,

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.

From The American Poetry Review, July/August 2014.