‘God Breaks the Heart Again and Again Until It Stays Opens’
— Nix Thérèse
When I first read this poem, I was instantly drawn to how provocative and fresh the images felt. For a poem that seems to be asking the same question again and again—“what if breaking my heart open only shows how ill-suited it is?”‚ we’re given opportunities to approach this dilemma from different angles, and question the heart’s capacity to both love and be loved, hurt and be hurt.
The second line is one of my favorites: “what if my heart is a piñata trashed to tissue and peppermint shrapnel?” Of course, using “shrapnel” makes us consider sharpness: these aren’t the full, round candies that were first planted inside, but rather the popped-to-pieces slivers that are left. These bits might slice our tongues open if we sucked. Neither the piñata or candy can fully be reformed, and yet peppermint can soothe the throat and refresh the taste of water. When broken, like some of the bullets pulled out of soldiers’ bodies and made into necklaces/mementos, it still finds a purpose. I’m sure some of the other candy is only intact because the peppermint was hit first. We keep circling around these concepts of targets, sacrifices, and leftover battlefields, though brought to this smaller scale. The heart is now more like an altar, but you can still only take its offerings gingerly. The sacrifice here feels hard won, but doesn’t that show it’s real?
Yet we’re forced to question if openness is really needed in a following line: “what if my heart is the creepy uncle’s yawning zipper?” While violence has come up in former lines, it usually has already happened by the time we witness the heart. We don’t see the piñata intact, or the 7-Eleven before its daytime robberies, but instead deal with the aftermath. Here, we’re drawn to liminal space between calm and possible violence, which creates a real anxiety. No one wants to look into that space because we’re not sure if we’ll find boxers, skin & body hair, or genitals moving. But we could also just see darkness, a void where shadows lurk but we can’t find anything recognizable, and that’s even more horrifying. If the zipper can expel a yawn, what can it take in? Even in its sleepiness, we question how openness can make the heart dangerous to behold.
I admire Cisneros’ specificity, namely for the way she lets us zoom into an image and decide how it’s textures make us feel. I have to ask, what would your compare you heart to this week?