• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Painted Bride Quarterly

  • About
    • About PBQ
    • People
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Print Annuals
  • Podcast
    • Latest Podcast
    • All Podcasts
  • News & Events
  • Submit
  • Shop
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Contributors
  • Current Issue

Emily Butler: Object permanence

September 9, 2022 by PBQ Leave a Comment

These new phones are slim, breakable. Smooth as still water. I

crave plastic on plastic, wrapping stiff cord around my finger

like a curl of hair, flirtatiously, though I felt invisible back then

on my parents’ porch steps, as far as the cord would take me.

These days I could use something to clutch, something to slam. 

 

With a typewriter, writing was not nearly so clean

or so quiet. I took comfort in the drawers 

of the card catalog, reliable and sturdy as a

train. Not even a button is a button anymore. 

I visit them at elevators and crosswalks. 

I pull them off my sweaters 

just to hear them clink together in a box. 

I smash this screen to watch it form a web. 

Filed Under: Issue 103, Poetry, Poetry 103 Tagged With: Emily Butler

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent News & Events

PBQ @ the Pen & Pencil!

PBQ Slam Session!

Slam Session with PBQ!

PBQ @ Poetry Tent!

PBQ @ AWP!

© 2020 Painted Bride Quarterly. Contact PBQ: info@pbqmag.org