So return my ringing heart

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A m   I   B l u e

Downtown

North, South Carolina

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Dream Of The Phone Booth

My story’s told in the mis-dial’s
hesitance & anonyms of crank calls,

in the wires’ electric elegy
& glass expanded by the moth

flicker of filament. I call a past
that believes I’m dead. On the concrete

here, you can see where
I stood in rust, lashed to the grid.

On the corner of Pine & Idlewood,
I’ve seen a virgin on her knees

before the angel
of a streetlight & Moses stealing the Times

to build a fire. I’ve seen the city fly
right through a memory & not break

its neck. But the street still needs a shrine,
so return my ringing heart & no one

to answer it, a traveler whose only destination is
waywardness. Forgive us

our apologies, the bees in our bells, the receiver’s
grease, days horizoned

into words. If we stand
monument to anything,

it’s that only some voices belong
to men.

= Emilia Phillips =

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Happy Thursday