“Reset Your Heart,” Bud Smith‘s poem from our Spring 2015 issue, is thick with unforgettable imagery and indispensable life advice.

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FORGET YOUR NAME. Hold your heart in your palm till it finally
stops.
“Friends may know you better than you know yourself”

Fling silver key to City into sewer.
Deny mountain of problems: call them routine riots; daily
avalanche; plain life, ordinary fire.
“Friends may know you better than you know”

Flip a doctor’s desk.
Sip sap from a falling tree, domino’n the rest of the forest.
Circle a lost love with a chalk line on the sperm bank sidewalk.
“Friends may know better than you”

Check out of abandoned hospital.
Eat a million marshmallows, not a single soggy Cheerio.
Avoid tears any smaller than a soft ball.
Dump paint thinner on car; wolf out in red moonlight,
lurking down twitching street.
“You may know better”

Karate chop your childhood sun apart.
Dodge rain clouds with all the grace of an electrocuted
mouse. Keep a bird up a sleeve somewhere.
“You may know better than yourself”

Jump from a police helicopter off a waterfall, land in quick
sand, disappear forever.
Tell the truth for once to a beguiling executioner.
“You may know yourself better than friends”

Now squeeze your heart till it starts again.
I repeat, squeeze your heart till it starts again.
Give yourself a perfect name, a “new” perfect name.
there: just like that
“You may know yourself better than your friends”

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BUD SMITH works heavy construction in New Jersey. His writing has recently appeared at Entropy, Electric Cereal, Smokelong, decomP, TheNewerYork. He’s the author of the novel F-250.  www.budsmithwrites.com