by Phil West

The phone is no longer a phone. It is
a nerve ending, giving you a piece
of my desk, a Pavlov's bell, the sharp
rings and pauses. You send relief, shame,
the opening of ulcers down the line.
The rings come then don't come, and in those
feeble-fisted hours where silence
aches and blossoms each fresh bell, you are

there, seeing the glasses half-empty.
Crushing the paper birds in your fist.
Combing for failure, roughed edges, stray
fibers in the fabric. The photos
document your walk across spines, and
you patrol for the telltale red spots
in the eyes, the calling card of flash
bulb amateurs, knowing we'll do it

over, same people same poses
until it is perfect and perfectly
owned. We watch you ascend each arched back, each vertebrae a rung.
You are those slow headlights down the street, across our windows,
the thing that can't be killed. We
have drifted early, to our beds, dead
wood, offered up, for execution.