At the Call Center

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they record their answering machine. The varied way each teeters along, says something, I'm certain of who they are—from hard-edged statements if you are a telephone solicitor, please hang up now to loosely rolled spliffs miracles and sweet dreams are growing in the field. Each individual's message says something about how they conduct themselves at a meal, tells if they are a city, country, or family type—uptight, distant, proper, or neat. Every person, when they record a message, writes a poem. Their voices, brief soliloquies, I'm sorry we can't answer your phone call in person waver pentameter, tetrameter, haiku, and free verse.

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