Early Elegy: Telephone Booth
Its remains: a plexiglass crypt robbed
of confession, apology, despair, its half
of all conversation now a narrow
column of strictest clarity, a coinless
reliquary where the receiver dangles
like an unwatched hook, and the phonebook
hangs from its chain—obedient
to the numbered gravity of names.
Early Elegy: Cursive
Children train instead the small muscles
in their hands to strike—uniform, precise—
preformed fonts of their choice. Frail evidence
of ornamental scripts (and cloven nibs, hairline
serifs), the signature, still required, survives,
though poorly executed, its likely demise
the scan of a single fingertip—loops, inkless
whorls—one, incorruptible exemplar.
