1-800-HOT-CHAT

It’s such a dumb thing small thing. Right? I’m on the phone faking this guy out. Maybe some regular. He can’t know that I pick toe jam out my toenails in this warehouse with maroon cubicles with soft grannies & few students in swivel chairs. He’s just one more dumb small dud buying. Not touching. Just phone fucking me from a BBQ. Okay. It’s June outside. “What’s cooking?” I ask hungry. “Halibut,” he laughs, “What’s cooking with you?” I look around at the stale air. I’ve been losing weight the wrong way lately—without money. On my way in on my bike I saw a crowd at the bus stop & maybe no food made me think they swayed over some lady flat on her back on the sidewalk. Her fat feet in beige pumps stuck out over the curb. “That food sounds good. You should get some,” I say picking fresh pimples & blotting puss with my sleeve. “Forget that,” he says & we chat about what we’d do but like kids do: “Let’s pretend you do this. & then I do that.” Okay. Sometimes it doesn’t work like when kids say, “You’re dead!” & you say, “No I’m not!” But who decides? & this is what I want to know when I start hearing the BBQ. Kids closing in. Kids fading like running around. I hear a woman’s question. “Flowers,” she says. There’s his muffling hand his slick whisper like a shrug or dad or door clicking. Then nothing. “Oooo-kaaaay,” he says like he’s my boyfriend’s pal Trey who tells everyone I call him—chat hot when I don’t. Would never. He’s all “Oooo-kaaaay” the way he wasn’t with Ms. Flowers. & I drop the receiver. Stop my desktop solitaire game. ‘Cause I’m sick & froze & there’s a kind of life behind his voice. & it’s touching me.

Image: “Lonely Phone” by Sarah Laval, licensed under CC 2.0

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Jennifer Jean

Jennifer Jean’s debut poetry collection is The Fool (Big Table). Her new manuscript, titled OBJECT, was a finalist for the 2016 Green Mountains Review Book Prize. She is the recipient of Waxwing Journal’s first annual Good Bones Prize, and she received an Ambassador for Peace Award in 2013 for her activism in the arts. Jennifer’s work has appeared in: Poetry, Crab Creek Review, Rattle, Denver Quarterly, Green Mountains Review, Solstice Magazine, and more. She’s Poetry Editor of The Mom Egg Review, and Managing Editor of Talking Writing Magazine. Jennifer teaches Free2Write poetry workshops to trauma survivors and to sex-trafficking survivors. For more information, visit www.jenniferjeanwriter.weebly.com.

Latest posts by Jennifer Jean (see all)

• 1-800-HOT-CHAT - February 5, 2019