Poetic Divination

“Phone Call Idyll” by Henry Allen

I want to live in a town where the women wrinkle their eyes
and say “Mmmmmmm,” a little sexy.
Like, a small town where it’s a morning in early spring,
and things smell sweet and dead
like cold sand
or a chewed-on pencil, and the wind twists the STOP signs,
and you don’t have to go to work
or school,
just drive around all morning, drive past the drugstore,
where the windows shake in
terrific sunshine,
drive past sidelong dogs and startled birdbaths, drive
till all that stands between you
and the horizon
is the drive-in movie where the sign says
SEE YOU IN THE SPRING! But it is
spring.
You park in the gravel by a phone booth
that trembles in the wind. Inside,
it smells
like canvas, or wet matches trying to burn in the glare
of smeary glass like a dog went
crazy in here.
There’s an old Christmas card on the metal floor.
There’s your own breath planting
fast clouds
on the black mouthpiece and things smell like teeth,
and things smell like a drawer full of firecrackers,
and the woman on the other end of the line
wrinkles her eyes a little sexy and says “Mmmmmmm.”