Novo Annum MCMXCIII (Em See Em Eks See Eye Eye Eye)

New Year's Day and lucky
with black-eyed peas,
a rosary on my dashboard and votive flames around the house,
an obsidian arrowhead and
one of the very first Transformers,
a rusty fishing lure (Daredevil small-spooned spinner),
and most of my baby teeth.
I need all the voodoo I can get.

The button on the cell phone is labeled
"redial"
which really means
"dial again"
and I just can't do that.
I'm looking for other numbers now.

For five dollars a minute I can talk to whoever I want
and get her to say the things I've got to hear or,
more accurately,
the amusing things I think I might like to hear her say
if that is, indeed, who I've been talking to.

For instance:
The one about the house in the tropics with a special room just for cockatoos and the way they, those crazy birds, had completely trashed it, the way one of them crawled up her leg that time by the pool, his talons only gentle pressure against her thigh
or
the time when we were driving to Boston and stayed in a Nebraska motel one night and she woke in the early morning, thick and still road drowsy, confused in those unfamiliar surroundings until she smiled to see me there with her, the way her hair fell back across her eyes as she relaxed to return to her dream
or
the curves her body made as she knelt at the edge of a significant geological feature, her anxious caution dissolving until she could look right into the chasm, could follow the descent of the little rocks she dropped as they fell and clattered the distance.