Heartworm: Poems

By Adam Scheffler

Winner of the 2021 Moon City Poetry Award

Imagine a keen eye and spritely intellect turned toward this thread-worn world. Heartworm, Adam Scheffler's second full-length poetry collection, gives readers exactly that. An example: The poem "Advice from a Dog" translates wisdom from, yes, a dog, beginning with the exhortation to "Piss expressively." From there, however, the poem gets to the literal heart of the matter, commanding, "[S]mell also the worms coiled up in / the human heart, thousands." But maybe you're not a dog person. "For I Will Consider This Cockroach Belinda" is a contemporary reworking of "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry" by eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart. Here, Scheffler praises Belinda, found in his sink "like a tiny Vishnu waving her many arms," or creeping up the curved wall of the sink "like a monk in silence." It doesn't matter what the world gives him; Scheffler pays attention - takes notes and shows up to the test prepared. Heartworm's forty-two poems send countless pricks and wriggles through the chest cavity as they ruminate on racehorses, ghosts, mosquitos, Zambonis, Mondays ... the ordinary and often devastating stuff of our lives.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0913785601
• ISBN13: 9780913785607
• Release Date: February 2023
• Publisher: Moon City Press
• Length: 70 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.3" x 8.3"