Please Hold

I’m patiently unraveling
on the phone while the automated service
explains overdraft and accrue
and rollover – I’m not talking to anyone
but I’m pleading nonetheless.
       I’m pleading for the earth to keep
rising under my feet, just in case
those darkened holes in rocks are listening.
                                            No one is listening   
down the darkened hole of my phone’s receiver
as I cradle it, waiting, between my ear and shoulder.

I am not who they think I am, not the vagrant
Daniel Shakless or Mary Marbles with a delinquent account,
or someone in need of bundling. I am
     someone in need.

Passed among the corridors of a many celled-organism,
through halls, between levels, I am speaking

with an interconnected fungus 
diligently breaking me down part by part. 
                                               My part in the great production
is to hold 
on tightly, as tight as I possibly can,
as I’m tossed down the cavernous sinkhole
I’m trying to call someone about, but each time
                      I call someone begging
assistance, the parameter widens,
grows deeper and gathers
strength as another hour of my life falls in.

While I’m Under

I slip off my underwear and dress
in paper. The removal,
a sound like chewing when I lie back.
The doctor explains
my womb as if we were sounding a deep lake
together on a small boat.
I hold my body

like a basin.
While I’m under, I dream of fruit
in the kitchen back home:
apple, pomegranate, plum, missing
seeds and stars. Hollowed
sound of growth, a bloom
heavy inside, a cracking
somewhere bottomless.
How vacant it feels, solitary
in the sterile silver bowl
which tips them
so easily out.