Stop Your Crying

Come on. Leave this place. Buck and buckle up. Make your way North through the border to Thunder Bay. Find a name your name your mother's name your family name on the list of radio epitaphs in the books or on the internet. Listen in on this conversation. Clip your handset to the junction box and become part of a family. Eavesdropping always works like this, to make you part of something. Listen to how they talk-the fact that they talk in English or in French, your heart's language. Listen to any mention of anyone named Crisco or Liz, any mention of armlessness or loss. Anything relating to glossy magazine photos or pictures in the paper. Any words between lovers or trace of God in the telephone line. Listen to the hush when the words are done. After the hang-up, the dropping of the carrier, the trunk is yours to use, to coast through to Florida in the wire where there is sun and everything is life-size and stuffed like an animal or an envelope. Take on everything you hear. Just don't speak or they'll know you're there. Let the tone guide you down the rabbit hole etc.. Let the pitch and squeal of faxes and modems connecting inform your grief. The wire connects you to Florida, your extended family, and anyone in Canada. You can dial up Liz or Crisco's sister. You can dial your armless brother's arms. You can touch-tone your way back to fire. You can fool the fools at Michigan Bell and tunnel out. You can encode your name in silence and rings of wire. Enter your name with the touch-tone keys and see who that gets you. Dial 313 which means lower Michigan or 906 which is your code, or 517 which gets you by the East edge of Lake Michigan. The dial is lit like a fire like a hearth above a fire covered with candles and maybe some Christmas shit. The fire is hot and sparks come out through the fire screen though they're not supposed to. The newspaper used to start the fire is black and bits float in the air: ings and halves of words, the conjugations and vowels. If you breathe you might get burned ends of language in your lungs or in your heart or in the billion capillaries, the cords that tie the spine to the thigh, the cochlea where you keep your balance, the mechanics of the middle ear, the throat so sore, the singing sinus, or one of the other important cavities of the body.