The Calling

1

In the haunted house

I’ve a friend

I’m afraid

to call a friend

2

Many rooms

behind the walls

of my bedroom

are strung

with police tape

3

I wake in the cold of morning to a man lying in my bed
with his eyes open. He looks like the man in the deep

of my brain who taught me about shame in my shame

-less years. I remember his breath. Overripe apple. Inside him,
I hear a crackling. A burning orchard. Or an empty house?

4

First a room

full of portraits

of my life:

there I slouch

in the mud

& there the bus

station of the first

city I lost there

my first fallen

tooth in my hand

blood there

in my smile—

5

My friend has done terrible things. Or thought of doing terrible things.

6

A rotary phone rings. Every morning. At exactly 3:46. The answering machine keeps collecting. Elliptical voices. Soundwaves stacked. Upon each other. Some pain. Riddled. Some. So calm. They’re lost in this ocean of dialect. Worse. Are these familiar sounds. Standing out. Like grains of salt. In the eye. There. My muffled voice. There. There. My unbearable cry.

7

& there

the portrait

of a child

who isn’t me

at the center

of the room

or the center

of my life

her face

bursting:

glitter & teeth—

8

I wake to the amber light of a wound—not a scar—unspooling
from my past & the man whose name I don’t recall, who I learned

to call Shame, gnaws at my thighs.

Most of my dreams are full of teeth like this. I call for my mother
to appear in the hall. Her face: copper & smile. The door opens

but outside
there’s only
light.

9

In the last

room: a flat screen.

& on the screen:

a flat line

10

& on the screen, a film loops: the death of someone I used. To know. Someone
whose face. I forgot. My friend. Sitting on the floor. Keeps pointing. At the
screen. & I notice. The screen. Is only. A mirror.

Source: Poetry (April 2022)