Animal Heart
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ANIMAL HEART
by Sam Moe
* 2nd Place, 2023 International 3-Day Poetry Chapbook Contest
In her “Animal Heart,” Samantha Moe often uses the most intricate poetic forms not to contain or constrain so much as to illuminate the edges of a wildness that we may see. In this way, carcasses of butterflies become heavier, knives lighter, love more starved. In Moe’s poems, the part exists alongside and may even overcome the whole—like “chewing tobacco in grandfather’s mouth,’’ like “deer, tails, stairs, clearings, eastern cottontails on their backs in the sun.” Like the heart itself.