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I read it in a paperback of short stories. It came from one of my father's books, so probably 60s.I think it was in a volume with Philip K. Dick's "The Electric Ant" and Larry Niven's "Death by Ecstasy". I don't remember if there was an introductory text, but most of it was a chart, over multiple pages where the heart of one profession was placed in the body of another with a short blurb of the result with the idea being that the heart carried desire and the body skills/talent. I remember poets, prostitutes, and engineers being among those so crossed, and I remember one of the outcomes, I think involving the heart of a poet, was "He committed suicide".

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Could this be "The Hospital of Transplanted Hearts", by D M Thomas? According to ISFDB, it was in two different anthologies with "The Electric Ant" (though not anything by Niven). And I found a quote on Google referring to it as one of a group of "clever graphic poems, more in the nature of grids or flow-charts".

edited to add: I found a better description here:

The poet has constructed a grid in which the heart of a certain category of patient on one axis can be read against the body of another category of person on another axis. Thus, one can look up the heart of a sadist in the body of a whore and find an apt or witty description inserted therein.

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  • That looks to be out. Thank you!
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Jun 13, 2015 at 12:42

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