‘Antiquity Calling’ by Elaine Equi

Looking at Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids, I learn that he
liked shoes and armpit crotch-shots of men and women,
both shaved and un’—all giving a good whiff to the camera.
But best of all are his pictures of ordinary phones
which convey a palpable sense of expectancy as if
at any moment, one of the fabulous, laconic nude men
strewn about might call. One could pick up the receiver
and hear the garbled sound of ancient Greek and Roman
voices reveling in the background. But even when silent,
the dingy phone is a sex organ—cock asleep in its cradle.


Equi, Elaine. “Antiquity Calling.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Magazine, November 2008, www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51805/antiquity-calling. Accessed 1 Oct. 2023.

Callejón de Nubes

No thinking about the holes in teeth confused in cloud alley but elegant not selling elegance but true put the phone down elegance you ballet of proper verb forms then say ballet until her enjambment snaps off in her right hand the regional manager says put identity up there on the shelf beside the open box returns she’s talking about mycelium now or was a violent idiot a little tape holding it all together don’t take the comma deep underground take the coma of metaphor hey you guys look like you respect ska and city police neat and disorderly no one trying to reproduce scan or distribute any printed or electronic form of outre elder smoke returns through heavy mirrored interior of toilet paper tube violent design wins every time.

Modern Parenting Poem

Cardinal feeding utility flag drummers and drunks oversimplify flesh the meat the spirit the soul everything i’ve learned about writing taught by drum and drink control yourself you will be free of mother nature calm down the copper knife at the back of your throat offers itself as relentlessness of the order that ought to chill a complicated relationship with beauty in the age of attention o gag reject to reject the reject who for so long you’d been looking for through the intended ai of the antediluvian injury and free now that you’re wise outside time as a broken window who beloved escapes the flipped hgtv home to lean on the car and drop its acid values and smoke through the stethoscope to the heartbeat of a hedgehog you’ve learned to love and keep close to your heart you are an awning now a father.

Mental Health Awareness Day Poem

But what does it mean the guitar drones too loud what says the producer if a producer was involved at all in these cai guo-qiang epiphanies of cookie dough pit bulls leash themselves to the intersection of two corners arrive with incredulity at the real problem which looks so much as the fake problem is cautious therapizing the shadow in immense holocausts of cruelties the poor shambling well off gone feral in the face of a mirror act struggler struggling causing others to struggle with a crank of the barking knob of it all laid bare and flattened to cliche they shrug you shrug i shrug.

Current Events Poem

Eternal leach pissing air i gave you life free will and you did it wrong that’s love an out-door game in a comfortable place to blink its black flowers past apogee one on a side the it is the day the who is the human family breaking arms mending boulders we’ve lived many days under his brown lecherous breath whose.