King of Hearts
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King of Hearts
To plummet inside a body. A worthy task.
They drag me down on a leash, through the mouth-chamber,
the repository below the tongue. I swallow myself.
I arrive in a place stubbornly dim.
And a laughing city’s legion:
they caress my
winged organs.
I watch a church of bones slither up the sky.
Inside, air balloons hang off a sizable trunk,
spying in an arc toward the heavens. They pop.
On the edge of the dimness, someone thuds. Hisses.
Screeches. I should bite through the mucosal membrane,
an old raincoat, to observe how it nests atop the Lung-Tree:
King of Hearts, that dirty, beating machine.