By Angela Kubinec

Road worn and in need of voices outside my head, I let the radio scan the old-fashioned way

and it drifts
                         along.

But the hiss in my head that needs a new azimuth, a new altitude reveals itself in pre-measured jumps
so gradual

they become the nearly-Biblical evidence of hope.

A little hopscotch from ninety-three-point-three to ninety-three-point-five replaces
easy listening with not so easy listening

                         of other people’s scary talk.  It’s evidence that one-way communication makes everyone

                         an ear victim, a stuffed-mouth hostage, or at best,

One with the saintly blessing of selective deafness or the ancient age of believable incompetence.

A mythic-sized mass kidnapping rages between the thorned towers

            who call you call me call them and if you cannot get

            ahold of me please

            leave a set of words at the beep so I can lie about having received them

            or send me an email so maybe I will be spared

                                      the stab of an inconvenient

                                      text that tells me things I would rather

                                      see a face before hearing.

Explain to me how message became a verb.

I am raging in my self-propelled wind, trying to prevent strange occurrences.

            Like conversation with fellow peoples of the world.

I once dreamed of being a stewardess. Not a flight attendant.

I leave choked and stammering words smeared on invisible post-it notes.

                        I am a trapped-by-a-keyboard individual

                        trying to address the existence of the whole

                                                      clicking           pinging
                                                      vibe-ing           ringing
                                                      buzzing           pinging
                                                      vibe-ing           pinging
                                                      vibe-ing           ringing

get up-and-leave-the-fucking-table-at-your-grandmother’s-birthday-dinner-thing

insidious atmospheric-blind unmanageable world,

                       screaming myself a secret strawberry-hued face

                                                      analogue lost long ago, no scan.

Angela Kubinec is a writer from South Carolina. Her work has appeared in Carve magazine and she has received honorable mentions for contests in both Black Warrior Review and Glimmer Train. She currently serves as Senior Editor for the online literary journal Does It Have Pockets? She enjoys swimming and completed her first uninterrupted mile on August 8, 2023. She bought herself a tiny medal and wears it all the time.