Alita Pirkopf
New England Application
Today I listened closely
to what a friend’s daughter
wants from New England.
I will write a college
recommendation.
My parents panicked
at the possibility
I’d talk over the limit.
“Your three minutes
are up,” the operator
interrupted. My parents
agreed. A collect call
not worth that much,
apparently my parents
must have thought.
And I figured
that I wasn’t.
I dangled,
modified,
far away,
into
silence.
Wherever I went
within the campus quadrangle,
lugging large, weighty textbooks,
the cold Congregationalist Chapel
filled my fragmented head
with fear, fire, and brimstone.
I contained myself,
temporarily sustained
with a tourniquet
in college
I applied
myself.
The bell clapper swung
at my too-close, dormitoried ear,
breaking all hours
like night under lightning.
I memorized ridiculous jingles
for Great Themes—in music
I begin to get now. In class,
cut off, I cut into a pig embryo,
dead, numb, my tongue severed,
knives through the heart. Sick
for home.
Before Cell Phones
Other Connections
I am holding myself
around my hammering heart.
Now I stay, like a trapped
rabbit. Frozen in fear.
Long ago,
we left friends
on the outside
and cut
those connections,
or let them break
and fall apart.
Ours
I try again.
After dialing 911,
having the phone
pulled out of my hands,
I have to try again.
The door is locked.
The children sleep.
The phone is dead.
Its sounds end, like
my voice. Silenced.
Everything is
silenced.
Like a heart, mine,
ripped from my body,
the phone
dangles
from a cord.
Your strong,
muscled arm
stretches out—
in all directions—
blocking the miles
I would run, blocking
the years I would live.
