When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double

Diane DeCillis

• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780814348338
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Poems about being a survivor and the choices we make to protect ourselves, our homes, and our hearts.

Who wouldn't want a metaphorical stunt double to take the perilous fall that comes with the pain of loss or profound disappointment? The poems in When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double by Diane DeCillis consider resourceful ways in which we become our own stunt double and explore through a poet's eyes the anatomy of the mind, body, and soul.

Although many of these poems investigate loss and heartbreak, this book is not about being a victim. It's about how we not only survive our most challenging moments but how we thrive in spite of them. These are poems about all of the ways our hearts both help us and betray us during major life events: dealing with divorce, the death of a loved one, separation from those closest to you, or with the agonizing experience of memory loss. The speaker appreciatively observes "how hard the muscle has worked / lifting and lowering the weight of love and sorrow." DeCillis writes that loss can feel like your heart is limping "like a wounded animal / before you sink into the shelter of your own shadow." But with every loss in these poems comes rebirth—a beautiful, sensory-rich wildflower garden of new breaths and experiences. The character of the heart is depicted as a piece of human anatomy at the same time it's portrayed as its own world; an entire planet. DeCillis personifies the mitral, aortic, and pulmonary valves, describing our bodies as blooming with vegetation, a recursive image of living things thriving inside living things.

When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double takes us on a journey of what it means to be fully human. It touches upon the gifts we find in humor, nature, art, food, and how we celebrate the beauty of our scars. These are love poems: to others, to the self, to the body. DeCillis makes it clear that wounds need attention and care, but that loss always strengthens us. This collection will be admired by poetry lovers of all kinds, and those who enjoy modern and corporeal love poems.

II

In the Garden of the Universe

When the physicist said every piece of everyone—everything

you look at, from the thing you hate to that which is most precious,

was assembled by forces of nature in the first moments

of the universe—it took the artist back to her earliest memory

of being one with the soil.

A packet of wildflowers

spills willy-nilly

hard to decipher the weeds

Imagine what she might have written in her journal—

At night my dandelions evoke the grace of prayer.

They fold their florets like evening primrose

having gathered the moon and the scattered stars.

Dearest—wise old confessor

my secrets lie in

your seeded beard unfolding

The physicist said when you die pieces of you will return

to the universe in the endless cycle of death and rebirth.

The artist understood this when she carved Viva la Vida

into the fruit of her last work, a still life of watermelons,

whole and hewn against an open blue sky.

Later her husband, the famed muralist, by coincidence

or affinity, assembled a lush tableau—watermelons,

his final painting—flesh pulsing ripe and red,

sown with glossy black seeds.

Inside every seed and leaf

viva la vida

this is where you will find me

“I Feel Like I Sprained My Damn Heart”

—Whitey Winn, Godless

It happens—not the moment

your lover says it’s over, before

your heart limps like a wounded

animal, before you sink into the shelter

of your own shadow realizing

you’re no longer afraid of anything,

not even the dark.

Rather it happens

when you think the ache has faded

and you find yourself noticing

the last crimson leaf unsling

from a stark branch, its slow sway

and soft landing—so light, so brittle

that when you touch it, it all falls apart.

Extirpation

An expired packet of wildflower seeds found

in a drawer reminds me I have a habit of resisting love,

I name it possibility and forget what that means—

a habit of unearthing the past that taught me

to get used to the leaving before the leaving—

though it may never come.

I’m a damn fool and I know it.

What good does it do to learn

sadness before sadness teaches

its weighty lessons? We live in a land

of endangered species: prairie trillium,

marsh violet, rock jasmine, and beaked agrimony.

My astrological flower, the morning glory,

says this is how I’m supposed to flourish:

You bloom beautifully right where you are planted—

in the green of my Midwest yard, not the desert

where venomous scorpions dwell: the deathstalker,

the emperor, the man-killer fattail—

Transplant a tree from a wet climate to a dry one,

it will drink the riverbeds dry. Transplant

a heart using the venom of a scorpion,

it will increase its chance of survival.

Whoever chose to try it first is braver than I.

Yet, comforting to know, when hearts fail here,

they’ll thrive somewhere else.

Heartbreak Number One

Your finger, its flesh cocoons a sliver—splinter

from a sheltering tree. To remove it would ache, to keep it,

would ache like the smooth veneer that betrayed you.

This wound needs your attention, will redden its lips,

weep its sap, interrogate until your finger wags

its broken compass, finds solace in the cooling air.

Oak maple willow elm, limbs reaching beyond

your homey yard to sprawl in tangled wilderness.

How exquisite, how delicate our sense of touch,

and how we are touched by what is broken.

This tree—its roots coil your finger

to remind you certain kisses will scar.

Heat is strong. Pain is strong. Passion is strong.

And now everything strong leaves you weak.

Tatterdemalion

The legend of Tatterdemalion: a child banished to live in the woods who will make you love him only to steal your health.

Because the forest is not made of light,

and the rhythmic procession

of twigs snapping is enough

to sound like life breaking—

the feral child appeals to your sense

of hunger and begs for sweetness,

the dupe of swapping your candy

for his salt. And before you know it,

he invites you to his woodlands

to show you how soil provides

the roots with anchorage,

which you take as a wish for connection

until the knowing eye sees through the child,

witnesses the flowering of decay

as you gaze at your reflection in a still pond,

the spectacle of your red hair turning white,

a tree in autumn shedding every last leaf,

its barren a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Something About Baltimore
• I
• II
• III
• Acknowledgments