Dzvinia Orlowsky is a founding editor of Four Way Books. Her poetry collections, all from Carnegie Mellon University Press, include A Handful of Bees (1994), Edge of House (1999), and the forthcoming Except for One Obscene Brushstroke.

Phone Sex You weren't going to say this or suggest that - his, or yours. What you meant to say was right on about when, mostly about how. You always knew you wouldn't quite know where it would go if he said it first, or worst, only implied the other while you were thinking exactly the opposite. And what if he said, say it again, saying it again and you couldn't remember what you said, or how you said it. You hadn't planned on it coming to this before it came to that, making sure you're still alone in the room. You were only going to ask. You were only going to call to ask. Then quickly - mouth slowly working the air around the receiver, you were going to lie. The Phone For $12.98 it seemed worth it, a child's black office telephone. You believed the advertisement with the girl pretending earnest conversation for hours... You sent your money in. The phone arrived. Rang. You didn't walk over to answer it because you bought it specifically not to have to answer it. For a moment, you were happy - you were the good good mother who kept her children home, although it did bother you how something faceless could take on a voice, address your child, unscrupulously, by his or her first name. But this wasn't your toy, it wasn't some squeak or bell that called you. Non Legato It'll come back, the brown moth and its fur- powdered miniscule prick and huge mirror eyes some night when it's too hot for common sense and not quite hot enough for a favorite fantasy to root and climb its delicate, directional vine. It'll come back, too, the large doll whose hair I snipped, the cardboard doll with my head, a stiff photograph of my face, dressed in a red, blossoming recital dress. It'll come back and call me old, then hang up. It'll stand with a drink in one hand and water in the other and tap its foot until I remember its name. I won't, the way I can't remember anyone's name, or where I left what, signed or unsigned. It'll invite friends. They'll swoop down together over my kitchen sink, or watch until I step naked out of the bathroom. I'll swat their bulky air-borne bodies, sinister as gas. They'll ask if I'd consider having a face-lift, pretend to be my sister, tell me my hairline looks like a shallow grave. They'll make me wear gum on my nose, take a drive in their car - all my teachers who liked lace-up boots high on a my calves. I know they'll come back, greedy as goats, chewing on one long flavored piece of string. I'll talk to no one. Instead, I'll listen for that single fat possum that dies scratching each June under my chair, under my floor, its smell, heavy and oily like something I once brushed on my wrist with a slight glass wand, just before becoming ill, feverish in the room's stale air. I'll turn toward my shadow, lift the moth between my thumb and finger like a tiny bow to a sad violin, the voice that sings non legato, blunted, blind, that burrows deep inside to build a den no one finds.