Iambic Pentameter

When your resting rate falls to 34 faint raps
on a distant door, the doctor buries a tiny box
in your chest. Bluetooth, he explains—
a computer in another city tracks your pace
through a mobile phone. Our nephew asks if you
can play music with your heart. At night
I press my head against this new metronome.

Erin Murphy’s eighth book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Southern Poetry Review, North American Review, The Georgia Review, Guesthouse, The Laurel Review, Quartet, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include The Normal School Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Foley Poetry Award, and a Best of the Net award. She is editor of three anthologies from the University of Nebraska Press and SUNY Press and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona. Website: www.erin-murphy.com