My heart called out. No heart replied.
The beautiful city bought me a one-way ticket
out of town. The perfect woman
told me she could not come to the phone.
The wrong woman, her mouth open,
ate raw whale meat, sticky blood
staining her teeth, lips, and chin.
I hurt her by refusing to kiss her
again.
My dream job sleeps on cold sidewalks
under a blanket of want ads. My real job
sits in ten-hour meetings scheduling
even more ten-hour meetings.
As I wander among those with hollow chests,
it occurs to me that the heart’s response
is not found in romance or success
but in discussing the price of avocados
and comparing a tuna’s skin to the color of dimes.
Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over three hundred poems in journals such as Melancholy Hyperbole, Atlanta Review, and Pearl. He has also published over eighty short stories. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest.
Categories: Poetry
Tags: e-zine, ezine, hyperbole, Jon Wesick, longing, melancholy, melancholy hyperbole, new, poem, poet, poetry, poets, submit, The Heart – a Thick-Walled Muscle, writing
Melancholy Hyperbole 
I like this poem. It’s really very good, but then so much of your stuff is!
The surreal blends with reality leaving the reader in awe until the last 2 lines reveal the concrete. I would like to think love and romance are part of what drives one in their life, never to dismiss what wonders lie ahead.