Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Debit Daunter

I always know
from the curt and desperate sound of the ring
when he calls
and I let my voice go light
as the letters he writes me:
“Hello?”

“Ma’am,” he says,
“I’d like to talk to you
about options for erasing your debt.”

“Oooh,” I say.
“I’d like that.”

He’s not used to this kind of eccentricity
so he pauses before he tells me
about interest rates,
payment plans.
And I tell him how much I wouldn’t mind
being in his debt,
a man with a mind for hard numbers,
I’m sure he could keep things straight.
I ask him if his legal vocabulary
has room for words like
luxurious
delicious
hell, luxolicious.
I ask if his interest rates
are going up.

Then I hang up
and wonder what the rest of his day
must be like.
He owes me.

--

One of mine, and I actually know the custom words I got for this one:
light
eccentricity
(and yes,) luxolicious

I was always tickled how people really struggled to come up with their 3 words. I mean, agonized over that shit. I think a lot of people were in "screw it" mode by the third one, and it would either end up being something generically poetic like "love" or way out in left field like "luxolicious".

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Tod,

Where are my poems??? :( miss you much.