Stanza 1

In the first line of Ponsot's poem “One Is One,” the speaker identifies her subject. The first word in the poem is “heart.” She refers to her heart throughout the poem in two different ways: the physical heart that lives in her chest, the organ that is so vital in keeping her alive, and the symbolic heart that represents her emotions.

In the first line, the heart that she speaks to is clearly related more to her emotions, because she is, in essence, cursing it. “You bully, you punk,” she yells at it. This is an emotional response, possibly stemming from the speaker's own frustrations between her emotions and her rational thoughts. The speaker feels “wrecked” and “shocked / stiff.” She is shocked, but not as she might have been in any other dispute. This one has shocked her stiff. This image of a stiff body conjures up...