By Emilia Phillips
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.
Source: Poetry (November 2015)
Poet Bio
Emilia Phillips is the author of Signaletics (2013) and the forthcoming Groundspeed, both from the University of Akron Press. She teaches at Centenary College and edits interviews for 32 Poems.
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