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,
, Copyright © 2021. Used by permission of the poet. Photo by Thom, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.
Whenever I attempt a ghazal, I return to this one by Tania.
The phones- they are ubiquitous 🤗