I, Phone

"There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me.'"  - Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982)



Your fingers,
warm against my cheek,
caressing like pages 
of sacred scrolls.

Your eyes are
vacant hotel rooms,
green glowing 
in the dark.

The slack of 
your jaw, the heat 
of your breath,
So inviting. 

Through the mirror,
rivulets of black
and red crawl 
into your mouth,
lining your throat, 
wiring muscle and bone,
burrowing copper
deep inside pink folds.

Your voice, your body,
a conduit.

___________________________________



William

Our silver station wagon 
is peeled open and spilling 
across Rogers Avenue 
like a can of tomatos. 
Bent through the window, 
my father speaks glass and teeth. 
My mother siezes in the 
front seat. White eyes 
of an oracle, quivering. 

The phone rings on the 
hospital wall. "How is she?" 
a quaking voice asks.  
The shock of my mother's 
broken body speaks for me.  
"We're fine," is all 
I can say to the driver. 

I still think about him 
sometimes. Just out 
of high school then,
he might have children 
of his own by now. 
The burden he must 
still hold weighs on me, 
and I wish he could see 
my parents, smiling, as they 
play with their grandkids.

_____________________________________



Muse

Conjured once again, 
she lies in an exhausted 
heap of cream linen and 
feathers on my kitchen floor.
I wait, impatiently, while 
she peels off another piece 
of vellum skin. Ignoring her
frantic screams, I place 
my inkwell beneath the 
crimson fountain, pluck 
a quill from eider wings,
and write. 

---

Bio pending.

---