When I lay down to sleep dream the Wishing Well 
it rings

"Have you a new play for the brokendown theater?"
When I write in my notebook poem it rings
"Buster Keaton is under the brooklyn bridge on
Frankfurt and Pearl . . ."

When I unsheath my skin extend my [bad word] toward
someone's thighs fat or thin, boy or girl

Tingaling—"Please get him out of jail . . . the police are
crashing down"

When I lift the soupspoon to my lips, the phone on the
floor begins purring

"Hello it's me—I'm in the park two broads from Iowa . . .
nowhere to sleep last night . . . hit 'em in the mouth"

When I muse at smoke crawling over the roof outside
my street wisdom

purifying Eternity with my eye observation of grey
vaporous columns in the sky

ring ring "Hello this is Esquire be a dear and finish
your [bad word] manifesto"

When I listen to radio presidents roaring on the
convention floor

the phone also chimes in [bad word] up to Harlem with us
and see the riots"

Always the telephone linked to all the hearts of the
world beating at once

crying my husband's gone my boyfriend's busted
forever my poetry was rejected

won't [bad word] over for money and please won't you
write me a piece of [bad word] 
How are you dear can [bad word] out to Easthampton we're
all here bathing in the ocean we're all so lonely

and I lay back on my pallet contemplating $50 phone 
bill, broke, drowsy, anxious, my heart fearful of

the fingers dialing, the deaths, the singing of

telephone bells

ringing at dawn ringing all afternoon ringing up
midnight ringing now forever.