Payphone Prayers

38th Day of Lenten Poems for Leaden Minds

“Payphone Prayers”

By Maxwell Vagus

I whispered
Payphone
Prayers

On a
Boardwalk
By the sea

Poems like
Blood-borne
Sweat

From
Electronic
Gethsemane

“Hello,
Is someone
There?

Someone
Answer,
Please!”

Then above the
Darkened
Waves

She appeared
Sainted,
A cloud-torn tapestry

Fiery tresses
Spread
Across the sky

Mouth to kiss
The hand
Of predawn glory

While demons
Simmered, grasped
And reached

To pull her
Down

Down

Down
Under

All those
Inky waters

Boiling
Inside of me —

And after almost
Forty days

Trying to
Scrub my soul
Clean

She
Returns

A vision
Of a vision
In a forty-year-old
Dream

If I can find
A payphone
In this junkyard
Of sin

I will
Wait

And
Wait

And
Wait

This time

For it

To

Ring

Amen