magazines in a waiting room

for two whole years
the hearing in my left ear was off.
i tried my best to ignore it
but i'm left-handed
and i made my money on the phone.
for two whole years
i knew something was wrong.
i thought for sure
that a decade of my amp's static crackle
pop radio waves in foreign tongues
had rendered me close to deaf.
"it's like there's a sea shell to my ear,"
i told the doctor.
"all damn day long," i said.
he said he had just the thing.
he called to the nurse for some sort of thingamabob
he spoke mostly doctor that day
they mostly do, don't they?