John A. McDermott

J o h n   A .  M c D e r m o t t

T h e s e   T e l e p h o n e   B o o k s  

A r e   M u l t i p l y i n g

next

These telephone books are multiplying,

thrown on my porch, stuck in my mail,

in my in-box at work, in yellow

and blue plastic bags everywhere,

but there are no new numbers

in any of these white pages,

no matter how many volumes

they send me. No one really wants

to speak with me, there’s not one

voice on the other end of any line

I can call and to whom I can say,

hello or dear lord or please help

or most sincerely, I am terribly,

yes, terribly sorry.

T h e   W i d o w e r   a s   T o u r i s t

The adobe goat—russet and prickly—

in frozen dance outside the tchotchke store

in Albuquerque, forever bounding, forever

braying, stabbed the orange-black dusk

with his leap though the sidewalk was still

as a midnight church. Where had all the people

gone? Everyone else was far away, to celestial

spaceships and dimly lit bedrooms, skydiving off

our Earth, and here I was left, like this silent bleating

statue, his flight thwarted in fired mud, pinned to concrete,

envying his attempt at escape but kin to his capture.