Some phone number poems by my students. Tinkered to keep their actual phone numbers private! Again I’m struck by how good these are, how dynamic the line breaks, and compact the thought of them.
A clock,
Four chimes until sun
Hung lonely on a barroom wall
Tick tock.
Hank,
Red eyes, crooked spine
Twelve drinks until the night shift starts,
It’s only cycles
Tick tock.
What did you
do to make them so mad?
Insult their baking skills?
Or was it something worse? You
can tell me.
Well,
I said their baby was handsome.
Turns out, it’s a girl.
To be
just what I wanted
in the past, then
here
and now
falling down
getting up
just how I
wanted.
Hello there
I first saw you last night
Your face was set by moon light
Salty misty
Air
On the beach a glimpse of your
Red hair.
Hello there, if I may
I am in love with a silhouette.
Where is
my cat?
Is she hiding?
She hides in cupboards
sometimes.
She is an elusive ghosty.
Consistently
floats around my
house
like a spook.
Well well well,
Lookie what we have here.
An ambassador from my
hometown. You thought I’d left?
Negatory.
Still here.
I called finders keepers on
steering a bike with just one finger.
Melody
She sings as if it were life
She sighs soft songs
as if it were sad-
ness her
voice silences
the audience that
comes for her sweet sighing
of song
Can’t sleep.
I guess I rarely do.
I’m trying to keep my promise.
Hope.
I wish I could call,
I need your help.
He needs brothers.
The rain comes more often than it did.
They tore down the place you saved me.
I saw
no I have not seen it
I dreamt it sleeping sideways
on route to somewhere white
I had not yet an understanding
of what pictures could mean
I just felt you through the glass door
say nothing of truth
I know
the art of compost 