Ode to the Defense Mechanism

Ira Sadoff

Some of the deadpan（面无表情的人） comes from the flatness,

the feigned（假的） all-rightness, the sickening thrum of Kansas,

taking all day to drive through that treelessness.

Inside the hardness of the heart, the numbness

of the heart, there lay a smaller heart,

a splinter（碎片，微小的东西） in your finger, throbbing and pulsing

so you can see how alive you are. God

what a fenestration（开窗法） the heart is.

What strangers see is frontismatter.

An intro to the highlights as we see them.

All our old loves are still there,

impervious（不受影响的） and glass-enclosed. You can tap

on the glass and get a rise out of them

because into each life there must be

a ruler and a grid, a little schadenfreude（幸灾乐祸）

so it won't be our hearts breaking.