✨ Phone Ghazal

so much life to press ...

Phone Ghazal

A girl on a sofa caresses a phone.
OMG, she Snaps, she got dressed by her phone?

So many stories to funnel through fingers,
so much life to press into a phone.

Rain, snow, blooms spatter the windows.
A boy looks down, possessed by his phone.

Do our hearts wither in that cold silver blood,
shrink in the pulsating excess of phone?

A damselfly alights on a screen in the garden.
Shoo it and tweet. Impress the phone.

Something good can come, like always.
Have you not found light’s recess in your phone?

A holy man lingers at a T. Mobile stand.
They open accounts, and he blesses the phones.

A woman says she will die tonight,
unless she finds peace, unless hope in the phone.

The poet avoids the waiting room walls.
I can’t look up, she’ll confess to her phone.

—Tani Runyan

✨ Read more ghazals in How to Write a Form Poem…

From How to Write a Form Poem: A Guided Tour of 10 Fabulous Forms, T. S. Poetry Press , Copyright © 2021. Used by permission of the poet. Photo by Thom, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.