Poetry of Issue #7        Page 34

I want out loud

to hear a voice so I can feel its words
breathing down on me, not
bloodless text conversations
so, when your voice escaped
through the copper cable wires of
last century’s hospital phone
I lit up: yours lost in the accident,
you complained, and about
the nurses, cardboard tasting food
uncomfortable bed, each complaint
leading me deeper into the word
back to the Caribbean Island
you visited as a young man
with your first ex, to the
golf course where you last
played with your late buddy
to a job you loved for over
20 years and without ever deviating
from that list of complaints,
your voice led me to the
edge of mortality’s precipice

  Linda Lerner