This emotional poem about heartache and the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” particularly in the aftermath of a failed relationship. Lew takes the metaphor of emotional pain as being related to the heart and extends it to the realm of medicine, by referring to the speaker as “the subject” and creating an interface that suggests experimentation on or examination of that test subject. The image of bubbles (or are blood clots?) floating around the screen, is an interface for scheduled stanza sequences activated by a mouse click. The sound of a heart beating in the background and the poem that unfolds as you click on the bubble/clots (with 1 to 5 bubbles, which can be read sequentially or not) suggest that heart-stopping moment when one encounters a greeting card from a departed loved one.
This poem is reminiscent of D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Medlars and Sorb-Apples,” because it examines the same phenomenon, though Lawrence comes to a different conclusion when he says “wonderful are the hellish experiences.”
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
