Jason Ryberg

Telephone Call at 3AM

A telegram from

     beyond the grave / a tele-

phone call at 3AM /

     Morse code pinging out from the

vast network of the

     world’s worn out plumbing / postcards

from places that no

     longer exist / secret trans-

missions from the isle

     of lost souls coming in on

the far end of the

     AM dial, one night, when

the moon is just right /

     an obituary for

a man who doesn’t

     know he’s dead / front-page, headline

news from the future /

     protest or proclamation

taped to the back of

     a statue of some patron

saint of something or

     other / a footnote to a

secret history /

     the caption beneath The Big

Picture / a random

     snippet of useless info

found in a fortune

     cookie or ancient tome of

forbidden knowledge

     found at a rummage sale / the

opening lines to

     a farewell address / the next

to last line of an

     article of bad faith / the

parting shot to an

     unfaithful lover / a wire-

tap transcript to a

     late-night collect call from God,

something about the

     large print which giveth and the

     small print which taketh away.