Xenotransplantation

Poems

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September 5, 2023

Xenotransplantation

Sam Sax

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This article appears in the September 18/25, 2023 issue.

my friend’s got a pig heart in him.

my friend’s got part of a pig’s heart,

a piece, his heart’s part pig.

the aortic valve is the dog-god

guarding the tube blood runs

through once it’s been scrubbed

clean. one of two semilunar

valves which sounds like a part

of a moon, a piece. my friend’s

got moons in him separating

the two major atria. my friend’s

full of ballrooms, those dark

vaulted ceilings. my friend’s a vegan.

my friend’s a vegan with a pig heart

thumping club music. my friend

believes the pig in him is vegan

since it eats what he eats,

speaks when he speaks. the pig

heart pulses in his chest

like a reflection of the moon

in a puddle out behind the club

once we’ve finished dancing.

my friend takes drugs so his body

doesn’t reject the organ. my friend

takes drugs so he can go on

dancing. his pig grown to be

sewn into a man’s ribs, unnaturally

selected, no god could have

predicted this in any garden.

still holy the bit of tissue

that lets him live & live.

thin filament that set another

seventeen years going inside him.

if you listen with one ear

to his chest you can hear

the pig heart singing, calling

out to any listening animal:

all i. want is. to live. & live.

& live. & live. & live. & live.

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Sam Sax

Sam Sax is the author of Madness (Penguin, 2017), winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Terrance Hayes. His second book, Bury It, will be out on Wesleyan University Press in 2018.

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