Phone Call Idyll

by Henry Allen

I want to live in a town where the women wrinkle their eyes
and say "Mmmmmmm," a little sexy.
Like, a small town where it's a morning in early spring,
and things smell sweet and dead like cold sand
or a chewed-on pencil, and the wind twists the STOP signs,
and you don't have to go to work or school,
just drive around all morning, drive past the drugstore,
where the windows shake in terrific sunshine,
drive past sidelong dogs and startled birdbaths, drive
till all that stands between you and the horizon
is the drive-in movie where the sign says
SEE YOU IN THE SPRING! But it is spring.
You park in the gravel by a phone booth
that trembles in the wind. Inside, it smells
like canvas, or wet matches trying to burn in the glare
of smeary glass like a dog went crazy in here.
There's an old Christmas card on the metal floor.
There's your own breath planting fast clouds
on the black mouthpiece and things smell like teeth,
and things smell like a drawer full of firecrackers,
and the woman on the other end of the line
wrinkles her eyes a little sexy and says "Mmmmmmm."