Gossip Street

A telephone eats itself in anticipation

Jane sits

consumed

in her hungry chair

in her hungry room 

of her famished house

in the centre of Gossip Street

Everyone speaks

but no one calls here anymore

an oven watches meals for one

the television serves portions of viewing

for the daytime eyeball

on Jane’s sunken shoulders

A wall clock shaves seconds

then days

finally years from her face

pouring her fluid soul into empty teacups

across unwashed plates

and down the plughole with a sigh

The telephone passes itself into a toilet bowl of quiet

Jane stands at her narrow window 

staring-down her narrow world

from her thinning home

in the centre of Gossip Street