Cameron Morse
BPM
In the rosewood exam room
surrounded by stainless
steel coat hooks and escutcheons,
the heart of my unborn son
bangs across the fetal doppler
144 beats per minute. How briefly
our nurse allows us to listen.
Silence lingers in the wake of radio
waves, the abandoned silence
of a hummingbird that manifests
among the zinnias my wife and I
planted in hope of hummingbirds.
Bio
Cameron Morse taught and studied in China. Diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014, he is currently a third-year MFA candidate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and lives with his wife Lili and newborn son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri. His poems have been or will be published in over 100 different magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, South Dakota Review, I-70 Review and TYPO. His first collection, Fall Risk, is available from Glass Lyre Press.