What do we do when the most figurative organ in our body slowly and ultimately fails us?

Chamber Made references the heart’s chambers and how the speaker is so quickly defined by them, regulated to operate around the limitations they present. Additionally, the notion of a chambermaid, one who serves and exists wholly inside the vial of domesticity echoed back to the dissolution of a marriage. A marriage that was broken before it began with the implant of an artificial device to regulate the heart. What happens when we rely on something foreign to do the work of a natural thing? How does it alter our ability to love and be loved? What is lost in translation?

The poems in Chamber Made depict the realization of mortality, invincibility, and loss. There is a reconciling of death for a previous body where the doctor is an archetype, God-like figure that unionizes the speaker and her husband. A voice of a disapproving mother is woven in throughout the manuscript and the husband’s lust for the “other” is a constant undercurrent.

As the speaker’s body rebuilds itself, the dissolution of a marriage occurs. As if the pacemaker has become a secret lover thrust into their lives. Each poem, each word, each decision the body makes is seeking love. The poems in Chamber Made allow for labored breathing as we glide through the tensions of life, the release of regulated heartbeat, and takes time for moments of observation that the speaker realizes only after the loss of the body’s natural function and the loss of a lover.

Visit Poems to read some of the pieces that appear in Chamber Made.