phone burial 

i'm going off grid. i'm going
viking burial. my father used to tell 
a story of driving to arizona 
with his father in their jeep.
was it a jeep? i don't know. sometimes
when we retell stories, we just
turn them into what we need.
they would go into the desert to visit
a friend who lived outside of the world.
he built his own radio tower 
& he talked all night to ghosts. 
the ghosts would circle the house & enter
through all the cracks, filling the place
with smoke. i think i was there too
with my dad & my grandfather
& the smell of burning. i want less light bulbs.
i want less screens to tempt me with 
bites of ugly sugar. i take the phone outside.
i hate how much it has become
a limb. little flipper. little fist. cut it off.
i bury it in the worst place
in the yard. i don't want it near 
the quail bones or the cat. instead,
i want it to slip deeper & deeper until
the land has lungs. until it is spring
& onion grow like thick hair from 
beneath the sycamores. i cover the phone
with earth & wonder how i will
tell my friends i am on fire now & how i will
make the tiny thumbs of money that
keep our fridge stocked with green grapes. 
the phone is gone though & i am wild.
i am in the desert. the house is a waterfall.
all the ghosts are coming fresh & smelling
like dried rose petals. they leave foot prints
on the ceiling. a bird offers to be
my carrier. i whisper a secret in her ear
& tell her to go & spread rumors.
my grandfather's cane thumps against
the wall. a conversation plays as if 
there is a radio. there is no radio 
that i can find. in the morning the phone,
undead, has crawled from the soil. 
she rings & announces there is 
a software update. i contemplate
burying her again but i don't have
the arm strength & the ghost endurance.
i pick her up. use my body noise
to open her face. dream wildly of what happens
when we escape. my father told me,
"the stars were like fireflies there, glowing
loud enough to light the red earth."