Wind Phone

In Japan, a man built a glass booth with a rotary
phone inside to talk to his dead cousin. 

In 2010, after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown,
he opened his kaze no denwa to the public. 

Thousands stood in line nursing grief, the gift of living. News of life
burning holes in their pockets. Updates on children and rebuilding
waiting to be set upon the air’s altar for the dead.

Our friend’s father passed away last month. He and his sister
are putting stickers on plates, assigning value to snowmen and cows
too cute for their mother to leave on store shelves. 

We bought their father’s TV for a hundred dollars
to put in the center of our living room. All the furniture
facing it like a shrine. 

The phone, small enough to fit in my hand, sits on the corner
of a table cluttered with junk mail. I do not talk to my dead enough. 

As a teenager, I said a prayer each night to my grandmother,
my great aunt Carrie, my mammy and pappy. Thanked them
for watching over me. Because I still believed 

the dead watched over us all. As though anyone can watch
over another as a kind of protection spell, as a kind of love. Not
the voyeurism of the living, the jealousy or relief of the dead. 

Halfway there myself, I am afraid of too early a death. Two people
younger than I have died this year. And I am afraid of too late
a death. My mother doesn’t remember so well and our friend’s father,
he died surrounded by strangers wanting only to go home. 

I am Goldilocks hoping I will find just the right time to go
into the wind with all my news for my dead bundled like a package
lost in the mail for decades.

I cannot escape my body 

I sit with the pain
in my jaw. Feel
tightness of clench
ing, of the body
speaking, of stress
tucked into crevices
where it does not
belong. I open
my jaw into the pain.
Feel the muscle
stretch like a bow
string, tautness
anchored to my
neck, to my shoulder,
to my spine, to every
muscle, every sinew,
every bone and organ,
connected to the space
between cells, between
blood and flesh, a mini
cosmos circling itself.
I lean into the pain
like a promise
or forgiveness.
It spreads to my teeth.
I spread with it. Sink
ing into the body’s cry.
The body knows only
one way to speak, with
tightness and release,
sensation translated
on synapse.

Sweet Water

I pretend to be asleep with my husband’s
lips at my ear. It’s best for him. He only wants
to say goodnight after a day of not seeing one
another. But I turned off the lights to brood in
my unnamed feelings crackling like static
electricity after I told our dog to fuck off. 

It is in the world’s best interest if I pretend
to sleep until I stop being angry at nothing I
can touch or see. I don’t know how long
I can pretend, how long I can carry anger like
a fallen soldier with a shrapnel torn heart,
body covered in gunpowder waiting to ignite. 

Worst of all, I don’t know if I’m angry
because the world is broken or because I am.
I look for the garden with dark vines, the poison
tree sprouting decayed flowers. But all I find
is sweet water, a dog who dances circles
of greeting when I come home, and a husband
who misses me enough to whisper into my dreams.

Author’s Biography

Lacie Semenovich is a poet, fiction writer, and creativity blogger living in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig online, Qwerty, Chiron Review, Writing in a Woman's Voice, Of Rust and Glass, White Wall Review, Best Short Fictions 2020, and other journals and anthologies. She shares her writing and creativity tips online at The Spaghetti Year https://laciesemenovich.substack.com/ . She is the author of two chapbooks, Legacies (Finishing Line Press, 2012) and Community, Not Market (forthcoming from Fallen Tree Press).