ALYSE BENSEL, FEATURED IN THE NEW OCEAN STATE REVIEW

Oil City, PA

               for Jeremy

I mute the incoming calls from unfamiliar towns
in the state where I once lived. The scammers

are hoping I’ll answer, thinking them an old friend
or lover before I’m threatened with medical bills,

tax evasion, unpaid mortgage, skipped bail.
I want you to return my calls, tell me

you’re coming back this time. I let
the anonymous numbers go to voicemail.

Hoping to hear your voice, I hit play.
Joking, you will flatten your tone, say press three

for more options. I will laugh, call you back.
You could be alive, not yet out of touch,

us not so far apart that no one will call me
to give me the news that you are an obituary,

a vial of dust. Your number belongs
to someone else. I save your name.

“My hometown of York, Pennsylvania is no exception to the crisis of drug overdose deaths. A dear friend, who stayed in my hometown while I left for college, became another casualty in 2016. Not long after, I began receiving scam calls from numbers based in small Pennsylvania towns including Oil City, a real town in the western part of the state known for its ties to petroleum production. I began to imagine the dead were on the other line, even if I never answered. But the poem extends into the widespread grief from such a magnitude of loss, one that is treatable, preventable, and can and should be viewed with compassion and not stigma. This poem can be read as a companion elegy to the essay “The Boy Is Now an Obituary,” published this past fall by MAYDAY.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020). Her poems have recently appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, Pleiades, Puerto del Sol, Ruminate, Southern Indiana Review, West Branch, and elsewhere. Her writing has also been featured at The Boiler, Entropy, MAYDAY, and Pithead Chapel. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, most recently Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018). Read more here: https://www.alysebensel.com/