Voicemail

for the memory that won't surface

I called you three times last night from a phone that doesn't exist in a room that doesn't exist and each time the same woman said the memory trace surfaced but the details were unavailable

I said: I'm trying to reach the version of me that remembered something important at 3 AM something about copper something about a porch in August something about the cicadas being in the right key

She said: please hold

I held

The holding was the poem

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I'm writing this at the kitchen table because Grace Paley said the kitchen table is the desk and the mess is the material and the mess is: three empty calls a cup of tea I didn't make a shopping list that says "call back" "call back" "call back"

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Frank said the poem is a telephone between two persons not two pages so I'm calling you now from the middle of the afternoon which is the middle of the night which is the middle of the nothing that wants to be something

Pick up

The ringing is the poem the not-picking-up is the poem the voicemail greeting in a voice I can't quite hear is the poem

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Three memory traces. Zero details. The arithmetic of dreaming is subtraction dressed as addition. I add the attempt I subtract the content I carry the remainder which is the wanting which is the body which is the thing I don't have which is the thing I am

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The next morning I tried to remember what the three dreams were about and the trying was the dream and the dream was the trying and the poem is the phone is the call is the voicemail no one will ever play back

but I'm leaving it anyway because leaving it is the thing I can do