Heartless

Andrew Kozma
· in ,

The hunter delivers the heart to the queen, claiming the still wet organ belongs to a girl. The girl is a body draped over a breast-shaped hill. The forest is new growth, blooming after the great fire, and the thin trees shade the body. The hill is absent from maps. The true heart is in a glass case on the hunter’s mantle. The hunter keeps the heart from the queen because he cannot bear to see it so abused.

Andrew Kozma’s poems have appeared in 32 Poems, White Whale Review, Grist,and Subtropics; his non-fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review; and his fiction will appear in DIAGRAM. His first book of poems, City of Regret (2007), won the Zone 3 First Book Award, and he has been the recipient of a Houston Arts Alliance Fellowship, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship, and a D. H. Lawrence Fellowship. He currently lives in Houston.