Skip to main content

The Telephone Call by Maurice Devitt

I was alone in the house when a phone started to ring.
I thought it was strange; no landline and my mobile
sitting silent on the table. The ringing stopped
and a voice picked up. I listened for a minute
and realised the voice was yours, so I wondered
had you slipped into the house unannounced. I ran
upstairs, chasing your voice from room to room
but still no sign. I listened more intently.
The conversation was light and frothy at first,
and, loving the timbre of your voice, I grabbed a coffee
and settled in. Like listening to a familiar podcast,
I nodded instinctively to everything you said and even
thought to anticipate what might be next. The start
of a familiar story prompted me to re-check the house,
tip-toeing self-consciously into every room, the sound
seeming to ghost just ahead of me. I stopped when
I heard a fresh intimacy in your voice, the volume
dropping to a whisper, as though you knew you were
being overheard. My heart was pumping and, when I froze
every muscle, I could just about hear what you were saying.
Words you had never said to me. A nervous laugh
and the call ended. The furniture relaxed and the house
shook itself back into silence. My mobile phone pinged.
A text from you: Please call, I have something to tell you.

 ---

 Winner of the 2015 Trocaire/Poetry Ireland Competition, Maurice has been runner-up or shortlisted in Listowel, Cuirt, Patrick Kavanagh, Interpreter’s House and Cork Literary Review. He is curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site, chairperson of the Hibernian Writers’ Group and has recently published his debut collection ‘Growing Up in Colour’ with Doire Press.

Comments

  1. Phone Service USA LLC9 January 2021 at 07:35

    This information is very interesting. I like your blog because the content was really impressive.Thank you for giving much of information
    Best Business VoIP Phone Service

    ReplyDelete
  2. TheVOIPGuru22 February 2021 at 18:25

    I got some great knowledge from this post about Business . You have done such a brilliant job by posting such an incredible post.internet telephony service provider USA Keep Posting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Etchatech20 April 2021 at 06:46

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time...
97 comments
Read more

Prints by Penny Ayers

A child’s mark before letters— sticky red palms, ten tiny petals, two flowers patted on white. Already they’re telling her story— the whorls of the thumbs, the dips and stretches of lines of life, of the heart. She’ll leave them everywhere— on the skin of lovers, knives in the kitchen, the riffled pages of library books, on window glass, wiping raindrops.   Will she reach out to touch things no longer there, make her mark for others to find like her sisters whose hands were caught in crushed ochre on cave walls, among running horses, the haunches of bison, 35,000 years ago?* *It’s now believed that many cave paintings were made by women, judging by the size of the handprints.   ---   Pe​nny Ayers lives in Cheltenham.   She has been published online and in various magazines, most recently in ‘Ink, Sweat & Tears’, ‘Snakeskin’ and the summer edition of ‘Spelt’. She helps run the Gloucestershire Writers’ Network.
1 comment
Read more

Smoking and Swearing by Ian Manson

He’s stood outside, he’s on his break. He’s unsure whether to be smoking or swearing. He decides on both. Inhale. Fuuuck! Inhale. Fuuuck! A person, a visitor, or a patient. Heading to the hospital, sees his scrubs and scowls. “ It’s not very professional for a nurse to be smoking and swearing. ” But he doesn’t care. He’s already done his good deed for the morning and by midnight he’ll have done a dozen more. Yesterday was a paltry four. Tomorrow’s shift will be five or two or maybe eight, and another night of finishing late. Inhale. Fuuuck! He breathes a cloud of smoke. Watches it swirling, ascending, a spirit en-route to heaven. The person’s saintly sanctimony means nothing to him. Because he’s on his break. And he’s smoking, and he’s swearing. --- Originally from Scotland, Ian has lived and worked in Worcestershire for the last 11 years. He can normally be found performing his poetry and prose at events on the Worcester spoken word scene...
25 comments
Read more