Hardware

Press ‘Play’ to hear the author read their piece.

It might seem to you that your machines are just as important
as your defeated heart, taking its beating too seriously
or not seriously enough. Those machines you depend on can
crash, go on life support, data lost in a cave-in as the heart

knows too well. Your hard disks corrupted with error messages.
The heart recognizing, goes on trying, you looking for what’s deeper,
explorer excavating for the tunnel to your pristine self. That can
never be corrupted. Hiding.

The heart is muscle, flexing into the decades of its drum rolls.
You believe in the power of fixing, tech support, software cleaning.
Lowering cholesterol, reducing inflammation. It’s becoming almost
the same to you. Your heart is echo, the sound of a trillion memories

traveling to your brain in a suitcase labeled The Past. Sound of a car horn
blasting, a waterfall surging, an orchestra playing a bolero. The heart
is wind, passage of time, silicon chips flying into the night sky. The next
day could be sun or torrents, still you go on, the things about you

in the files searching for immortality, if only they can be saved.
 
 

Phyllis Klein writes, lives, and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Silver Birch Press, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Portside, and Sweet. She believes in artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. And of course the healing power of sweets, her favorites being ripe red watermelon in summer and sweet tea in winter.

 … return to Issue 11.1 Table of Contents.