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Original artwork by Marina Hartzell Gallegos

The Organ as a Heart


Amelia Díaz Ettinger
Poetry

I want to see the depths
of my father’s heart,

the confession
of failed arteries,

the atrophy
of fate

from a life filled
with the spoils of regret.

“My life has been
such a failure.”

I know it is just a pump,
no “virtue spirits” there,

still, I struggle
to hold on to Galen’s view,

and pretend to know
my father cared for me

in the caverns of those now-empty chambers.
I want to walk its darkness

hold the softness of those walls,
to find its sentiments,

as flawed as the man that carried it.

Galen, or Claudius Galenus,
Greek physician 129 AD—210 AD