Soul Phone
At the outdoor restaurant I watch people pass by,
check their cells, their heads bowed in phone prayer
clicking to see if God has left them a message.
On my phone I googled the word soul
and got a wiki snippet that said,
“In spiritual traditions it is the incorporeal essence
of a person, living thing or object.”
Phones have souls because of man’s devotion
to the sound of their bells,
the tweeted meaning of their messages,
their peeping photos,
and appended apps.
Last night I dreamt I was a devotee
of the divine phone deities;
a hierarchy of seven underling gods
who are techies for the real God.
I dialed them nine nines
hoping for something prophetic
to be texted back to me, but there was no response.
When I woke that morning
I threw my phone in the East river
and watched the sun riffle the water
like a rhinestone salsa dancer.
My life is quieter now without my phone but I am content,
not yet ready for the last call.
Christine Graf is a commercial and fine artist. She has just completed Shopping for Love Online, a manuscript of poems about internet dating. Publications include The Aurorean, Xanadu, Main Street Rag, Common Ground, Bryant Literary Review, Christian Science Monitor, Georgetown Review, Timber Creek Review, Pinyon Literary Journal, The Mentor’s Bouquet, Pegasus, Chaffin Journal, MOBIUS, Deronda, Red Rock Review, Rockford Review, and Theodate Online Journal.