COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: Soon the electrical wires will grow heavy under the snow.
COUNSELOR: Are they over your house?
CALLER: I am thinking of fire
COUNSELOR: That is a concern.
CALLER: of the possibility of fire
COUNSELOR: That’s a meta-concern.
CALLER: & then / moving
COUNSELOR: So a really bad fire, if it makes your house uninhabitable.
CALLER: Across America
COUNSELOR: A fire that makes your state uninhabitable? Where are you calling from?
CALLER: in a car with a powder blue dashboard,
COUNSELOR: Right. Good that you got out of that house.
CALLER: Moving to country music
COUNSELOR: Uh… “know when to walk away, know when to run”?
CALLER: & the heart
COUNSELOR: “is a lonely hunter”?
CALLER: Is torn a little more
COUNSELOR: So, kind of the same.
CALLER: because the song says the truth.
COUNSELOR: Wait—when your house burned down, did you lose your truck, your dog, your job, and your man? And are you drunk? Or bowling?
CALLER: Because in the thirty-six things that can happen
COUNSELOR: In country/western songs?
CALLER: To people,
COUNSELOR: Of course. It were about robots it’d be technopop. Or industrial. Or maybe something by Rush.
CALLER: men & women,
COUNSELOR: That’s usually how it works in country songs.
CALLER: women & women,
COUNSELOR: Are you listening to k.d. lang? Brandy Clark?
CALLER: Men & men,
COUNSELOR: Ty Herndon? Shane McAnally?
CALLER: in all these things
COUNSELOR: It’s not just about their things, you know.
CALLER: the soul is bound
COUNSELOR: Yes, exactly.
CALLER: To be broken
COUNSELOR: No, it’s not about that. It’s perfectly natural. A person doesn’t have to be broken–
CALLER: somewhere along the line,
COUNSELOR: Well, I guess everyone has to be broken somewhere along the line…
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