VOICEMAIL POEMS

Saying I love you in my mother tongue is impossible. My mother never loved me in words. She gave up a continent for me, its contents traded for a feathered hope of better. For me, she went to scrub the floors in houses we could not afford, came home and scrubbed our floors, as well, then shopped, and cooked, and mended, and then scrubbed some more. The days all slipped into the slit between the scrubbing and the cooking, like errant peas dried in the gap between the cupboard and the stove, and there was never time for words. So now, my mother tongue sticks in my throat like the smell of bleach and cumin. I've had to learn three other languages just to find words to talk of love, and even so, sometimes I'll just offer to hem your trousers. ————————————– Ella B. Winters called us from England, UK. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

The bells like a leviathan breach the membrane of the liquid dark, tumbling forth like a vanguard incited by adrenaline and the call of drumbeats. The God Paradox States: 1. If God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, He has the power and also the desire to end evil. Through the open window, the January air bites at the alveoli lodged deep behind my sternum; moonbeams litter the asphalt in geometric shapes refracted by a million prisms all the way down. 2. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He has the knowledge and also the power to end evil. 3. If God is omniscient and omnibenevolent, He has the knowledge and also the desire to end evil The night is austere, the world holding its collective breath for the dawn of sunrise and the gift of another day; I drive by the specter of the old cemetery, and the bells continue to toll calling the faithful back to God. 4.) Evil exists. 5.) Therefore… My unfinished Ph.D.in Nietzschean philosophy floats into my forebrain like an air bubble. “God is dead,” I tell the bells, recalling my catechisms from a former lifetime with a sardonicism that feels almost like mourning. “This is not for God,” the bells tell me. “This is just for you.” I drive and I listen to the notes dancing through the dark on the way to my ears – the chimes and the melody and the perfect fifths – as the night opens up ahead of me and the rest of my life beckons from right down the road. ————————————– Shannon Frost Greenstein called us from Jenkintown, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

the vines awaken to greet the ripening day the sun climbs to its zenith scattering darkness from every corner you fold your sorrowing hands across your belly only yesterday there was a heartbeat your weary body tightens under the blaze of light yet your soul remains untouched by its ray ————————————– Aleksandra Jovičić Đinović called us from Serbia. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

money runs like blood through the big american corpse my big american corpse takes the subway chews the same piece of gum too long like cud like cows we mill in the smoke between tracks eyes wide and sightless our big american mouths follow hunger to hunger won’t see the plainclothes cop until it's too late won’t see him put his hands on a dirty arm won’t remember where that arm goes when it disappears into the non-place of a blue and white van sent to that other island where they take bodies we fear as if a person could vanish in a burst of white light as if a person were a problem we could solve do you believe we are innocent like animals like characters inserted for comic relief do you believe when the last brown face disappears from your block you will finally feel safe do you believe to feel safe is the same as happiness do you believe everything you’re told did you believe you’d lose nothing when you asked the machine to think for you to write your wedding vows and grocery lists to tell you when to smile when to jump how high did you start to believe it could not turn its face back to us that it would not show its teeth to quiet beasts fawning at its feet it’s hard for me to say ‘us’ even when I know it’s the right word even when I know I’m the ghost in the shell we’re the ghosts it’s one shell and just when I believe I can’t stand another moment alive moving like oil like money through this lifeless body my body tries to survive a man clips my shoulder he steadies me a thin hand dusty knuckles he smiles before he turns to face the little black box from his pocket heat of his hand still on my shoulder place our eyes met in the air human easy place where his dark american face meets my pale american face meets wind pouring out hot from the tunnel and the man waits next to me now his beautiful dark cheeks and his beautiful dark eyes move beneath their purple lids and the nod and nod of his head to what I can't hear the two of us wait for the train and the two of us wait like fledglings on a high branch for the moment his face turns back to my face and there is no face left between us ————————————– Birch Wiley called us from Brooklyn, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I heard the first note on a train out of town A certain je ne sais quoi was ignited With the flair of a madman, sprung out of my chair Slammed emergency stop and alighted Waltzed up and down the boarded up boulevard Enjoyed the sensation of the silent street Underscored by the tune of a tuba at noon Which put the soul back into my feet Spinning round to the downtown dive bar A subterranean musical flavour A menagerie of brass bells and ornaments Each a new spectacle to savour She’s a saxophone on a Sunday night A rollercoaster of instinctive grooves Dazzling, golden and just out of sight I’m inspired by the way that she moves Our passionate energy rises and simmers She whispers to me at the end of the song A paradise blossoms from the words that I hear- ‘If music be the food of love, play on’ ————————————– Lena Hadley called us from Hampshire, UK. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

This time I’m breast. Face down, breasts hanging as still as I could be. I brought my breasts, body, here, it feels like. I am not exactly my body today. I remember choosing dying in my sleep during the childhood game, as if we could predict or choose that kind of ending. I repeat the soft animal of your body – it hurts to forget the geese, Mary Oliver’s name, to rest my middle on a plastic support, even if covered with a towel. In the waiting room, I don’t think of Elizabeth Bishop and the horrifying breasts in the National Geographic she read in another waiting room as a child. I am an adult, reading about park rangers working with beavers to save the forests through dams. To trust an animal, to trust ourselves. To trust that nature can be contained. I am sure I will die of cancer. Does this stave off the car accidents? ————————————– Chloe Yelena Miller called us from Washington, DC. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Dear moon child of the Universe wake up and lift your golden feet & wave your hand's glory to your placid disposition however humble it may be without surrendering your human dignity For you have the worthy right to be present here void of dark imaginings of who's over your halo & beneath the sole of your feet Dear child see here as loud as the echoes of the walls of your heart not as broken dreams shattered by tricks, lies and politics of many men who are here enabled with authority-power to cancel the dreamers & nightcrawlers As a treader of this path stomping on eggshells moonwalking on the surface of every mountains without whisper or tell... Sing your songs loud to your silence & to the silence around you to halt all silences Even though you encounter defeat & the unfair blows of life knocks you down to earth flat — facedown! Beat your wings & rise from the dusty fall & wear your blackened eye with pride... and stand firmly in the sun with a will tattooed across your chest... fearless, deathless as the kill with shining sword and shield ready to battle... (to bury the dead in you) willing to give life another benefit of doubt For the dream is louder than the noisy confusion of life Blaze it... don't smoke it! ————————————– Uchechukwu Onyedikam called us from Lagos, Nigeria. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Do you remember that summer I spent trying to catch your snort in a jar? That snort you’d bury under a cough every time. A boy breaking through the drywall of a man. I wrote twenty-six poems about you. I gave you a warehouse and turpentine on your cuffs and night air in your gaze. But you wore yellow baseball caps, socks with sandals. Minnesota stamped in cotton, the blockiest state. Remember that time I poured boiling water into your roommate’s soda-lime glass? Not a clean break. A web. Tiny cracks all through the body and it just fell apart in your hands. Anyway, I'm on a podcast now, did you know? They asked me why I built the AI tool. I said I saw a gap I wanted to bridge. Because students weren't watching the lectures. Retention. Engagement. The host asked if the burden of responsibility should fall on individuals and I said no it's structural, and the right model could fix it. And I was so earnest, you would’ve slapped your left knee, cracked that snort open, and called me a sap. When I was beachcombing in Aruba I found a rock shaped like a brain and it reminded me of you. I held it to my ear the way you’d hold a shell, expecting the wild heat of your heartbeat from that morning after. But there was only the aural tragedy of the tide — the same wave, crashing into my ankles, over and over. I could build another reason for you to orbit my desk. I could buy us another summer with the jar open. I’ll bring the rock. Put your ear to the other side. Listen— I learned things in the specific key of your voice and called it professional development. I rearranged an entire curriculum so you could walk past my door on Tuesdays. I was always making something beautiful and useless, always pressing that rock to your side of the wall, wasn’t I? ————————————– Marissa M. Zhu called us from Detroit, MI. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Do birds fear heights, the way we fear living? Pigeons above all, always so low to the ground, and squirrels, not avian but aerial, crossed wires with cheeks full of preparedness, We risk so much to prepare for so little, The mourning dove is watching from a higher branch this evening. Their wings are the green of the faraway part of the sky during thunder, They strike it rich on a wire, before the mute storm, The atmosphere bursts like a train through the neighborhood, The train has come to see what it can pummel, but everything has been cleared for its path, It is an arrow, Just the air breaks, and the sparks flick themselves until they burn on air and die. Composed of listening light, orchestral sleep is prescribed, Upon every eyelid, over goose-down or under bridge, The green pretense knows no leisure, Our dreams underneath its weight are dastardly, but doctor’s orders are rarely easy, Even the even-handed ones, It's only Wednesday when the sky mimics the diamond’s light, cupped over my finger. All things, almost, you can never have cupped long enough to hold, So love becomes a marriage, and lightening a sound, so late, so late, In one baroque spring, could have been this year or sixty-five million before, Dirt’s veins strike it rich. ————————————– Vasiliki Argyris called us from Philadelphia, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

be still listen slip through the needle eye of silence. leave behind your preference for black licorice, your talent for word games your grandfather’s watch….your hair, your skin, your teeth enter naked as bones ask the furred, the feathered, the finned how to ford the river, how to scale the rock cliff how to spin your flax to gold feel the floor beneath your absence, the wide planks of the old house that were once proud firs breathing out cool fog, touch the skies those trees held up stand before gods that are strangers whose language is harsh in your ears and do not flinch trust kindness when you find it- the flesh surrounding the apple’s seed the apple carried in the beak of a raven become the raven’s fingered wings flying through time sifting wounds and wonders become your one unbearable wound cry tears that freeze in six-pointed geometry then fall and fall until they smooth mountains be the unmistakable snowflake that launches the avalanche and buries the village become the thaw uncover a memory of wholeness drip that sweet clean water on the growing vine of generations the vine that will someday flower with the twin stars of a baby’s open hands a baby who will cry out to you from a dense and troubled darkness and you will answer: heal child, the way is in your blood. ————————————– Sophia Rosenberg called us from Lasqueti Island, BC, Canada. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

We stalk the banks of swamps and slow rivers in silence, our voices too full of clam shells for hunting. We blossom in violence spring-loaded heads striking the mud for insects, salamanders, frogs our feathers arsenals of indigo knives, necks adorned with fishbone needles. Yet we fly so tenderly blooming from rocks slow wingbeats folding the air toward soft chests. For some, we are easy, conspicuous targets for others, kites pulling our own strings through sunset nectarine eyes in winter’s bare trees. You often see us alone and wonder how we mate but you haven’t seen what births us—the building, the gathering, the shared warmth of bodies. Alaskan coastline campus quad fountain we will adapt. We don’t come seeking attention tracing water with a seamstress touch but our exits are subtle as drag queens dropping coins for starving poets. Wherever we go the marshes may dry and the slick-calm ponds may grow scales of ice— they have, for centuries but so have we persisted. Soon, more than this, we will know abundance our beaks writhing with fish. ————————————– Laura Casteel called us from Pittsboro, NC. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I feel a grief for time taken I feel a grief for time torn I feel a grief that isn’t mine I feel a grief for another body in my body I watch The Chronology of Water knowing I will feel grief, and I do I watch it while I’m sick, mucus stuck in my throat, blood in my nostril, air trapped and hard to reach I watch The Chronology of Water with the book in my bag in my lap I feel a grief that needs art I feel a grief that bleeds art I feel a grief that runs red, bitten, the director said her favorite color is bitten I feel a grief that rivers I feel a grief that needs art I need art I need art Grief needs art Grief needs art I’m crying inside, the cry is a bubble in my lung, beating I want to cry on the outside but my body isn’t I want to cry but the pill I’m on makes it hard to I used to cry when I didn’t want to which is why I wanted the pill I used to bleed more than I was supposed to which is why I wanted the pill I used to bleed for two weeks and through every pad every hour I used to say the bleedpain feels like sharkteeth eating its way out of me The last time I had bleedpain my lover ate it out of me I used to feel the bleedpain for the week before I bled I used to feel the bleedpain for the week after I bled I wanted the pill to make the bleeding slow I wanted the pill to make the bleedpain stop I wanted the bleeding to stop I wanted the bleeding to stop I didn’t have enough room for it I never had enough pads to absorb it I don't have enough room for it I wanted the bleedpain to stop I didn’t have enough time for it I don’t have enough time for it I didn’t have enough time for it I don’t have enough time for it I didn’t have enough sick time for how much time I felt sick I didn’t have enough sick time for how much time I bled I didn’t have enough sick time for how much I bled I don’t have enough time for how much time I feel sick I don’t have enough time for how much time I feel sick so I call a doctor to call an office and the office calls me and asks if I really need what the doctor says I need and I ask the office how much more do they need how much more pain do they need how much more pain do they need how much more pain do they need to give me the time I need to be in pain I don’t want to look at the news because the news is about people in pain I don’t want to look at the news because the news is about people in pain I look at the news because the news is about people in pain I look at the news because the news is about people in pain I look at the news at the people being killed I look at the news because where else am I supposed to look I look at the news because how else am I supposed to see I want to scream so I write I want to riot so I write I want to break so I write I want to burrow so I write I want to grieve so I write I want to stop so I write I want to build so I write I want to so I write I want to I write I want so I write ————————————– Emma Sheinbaum called us from Brooklyn, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

In corpse pose I practice feeling the satin lining of my coffin, imagine the gently ruffled rim meeting my stiff skirt. Next month, I’m attending a wedding in a cemetery, and I can’t decide what people don’t like about that. Who wouldn’t want to haunt their own grave and then go dancing? This month, my sister turns a quarter of a century around in her pocket, contemplates saving it for later. By the time I was her age, I’d spent my two cents on stockings that would rip in the same line along my shins. Today, I play dead on a yoga mat, like this will be the moment I’m enlightened by mortality and not like this feeling has been shadowing me since birth. I stretch out the elastic in my veins as if they’re under warranty. Head still, hands crossed over heart, I inhale for a count of eight decades to fog mirrors with the water my body heats to steam each morning. ————————————– Mary Geschwindt called us from New York, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

For years the school bus took the same path past your grandmother’s house—just uphill from yours each day the fields flickering past, sometimes filled with corn, autumn filled with hay bales that long swinging arm of the sprinkler tempting in the summer heat, always running as we’d drive back to your house on the way home from town and one year, many years later homesick, soul-wandering spied dandelions growing, a trove near the treeline and parked near the ditch to sit for a moment with my thoughts all running rampant when they turned to you, and childhood how second grade best friends lived extremes up and down the hill, across the trampoline riding top speed on gravel roads I used to ride my bike to you, we lived close enough to each other it was possible for my little body to pedal itself there and back without exerting what it can’t spend what it doesn’t have, maybe still lacks the dandelions far across the field yellow bright mirage in the distance I would walk there now if you’d meet me. ————————————– Nicholas Bonarski called us from Grand Rapids, MI. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I’ve had enough of new names, new ways of trying to stop time, it just creates more sleet in the steep curves of my pale existence, of ways to prod and avoid the emotions that rock the course of my continuance, which is entirely filled with paper birch trees— during the short window available, my entity responds to anything with the word “paper,” gets me mapping the “just was” page. I wanted to have deeper words about the Caribou, new designations that would help me “see,” but writing is always a walk in the dark, dependent on the will of my body, including that variable, the brain. If I had soft velvet horns and warming fur I might be okay with my scattered disposition, instead I take umbrage with the time allotted— the image of the glam reindeer in the cartoon I saw as a child, and my fear of extinction in the future. What I learned then as we shifted from one school to another, was the motto “adapt or die,” isn’t that true of all of us? Especially for those stuck in migration patterns? I thought it would change once I became an adult, could control my own movements. I took stock of the temperature, tried to be kind. The voyage can be one into lower realms, but that’s one of choice. I want to excuse myself all the time and make adjustments, change. I got stuck in the branches of the forest and had no herd to guide me. I got here, for now, to a desk and typing—the entity with my name never imagined months in the silence of a temporary haven. Most of the time I look back at what can be culled so that I can mine it on paper or communicate with you. From the first I wanted to please and repair the scar, wanted her to see me, but the chaos around the musical was full of wild animals and shadows. My body will evolve to cope, or just end up in trampled grass. Remind me of where I want to go. Oh yes, those northern landscapes where we won’t be dying of thirst. ————————————– Eléna Rivera called us from New York, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

There’s a hopeful part of me that thinks you love me more than you need to understand But I know you because I’m the same as you, Kindred Spirit grandpa So I’ll tell you that: Ken dolls don’t have nipples And what if he ended up that way by having top surgery, Double incision for ultimate contouring? Thus I think it stands that Ken is a transmasculine icon Loved and adored as a god because that’s what Barbie and Ken are, The deities that underscore what it means to be a person, that who we are is limitless. Thus Ken being trans stands to reify our place in the natural order And I think I’m like him in that my gender isn’t Barbie, I’m separate and me and I don’t want my nipples. In the end I’ll look like Ken, limitless But I’m still the grandkid you play ping pong with every week And this isn’t any more different than being a writer amongst a family of scientists And I know you don’t get that either So I’ll explain it as this: I never really grew out of playing with Barbies and Kens So the stories I’d give them Now take the form of manuscripts ————————————– L. Amariti called us from Voorhees, NJ. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Angel Monet LoMax called us from Enterprise, AL. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

"a childhood bedroom is a whole world" after Cheryl Boyce-Taylor there was always someone day-dreaming hurtling towards the other world falling for somebody’s son grass-stained knees weaving in and out of love condemning their mother tongue twisting tradition out of ghost tale crossing an ocean on a paper-mache boat painting their nails black dressed in robin’s egg blue bright red gushing between them legs having a tea party with a beast mistaking a father for a prince fathering the future from a question-mark counting sheep learning to read between the lines reading limbs shrouding their body in glitter befriending the witch within making mud soup under moonlight drinking it all in commending Mother Earth bound by something soft tender-hearted beating on a kitchen pan drum bruising their ego begetting life in verse crooning in arms blessed divinely alive ————————————– Gabriela González called us from Brooklyn, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

frostbitten hands snatch at the cigarette dangling from your lips and you stoop to meet my gaze with a hangdog expression. i want to be angry (god, i want to be so angry) because cigarettes will kill you in a lifetime, and – i have handwarmers in my fucking pocket. but love is a two-way street, so it doesn’t matter if my pockets are overflowing with iron powder and saltwater, or if my hands offer woolen mittens, or if i crank the heat in my bedroom to ninety degrees with just the friction of my hips on yours. love is a two-way street, and if your frostbitten hands won’t drop their carcinogens, you’ll freeze to death. i cannot exhale love onto your fingertips, bring feeling back into your bones, without you first reaching for me. and i want to be angry (god, i want to be furious) but how can i be, when the only thing your body knows is how to weather a midwest winter? ————————————– Nix Carlson called us from Lexington, KY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I hang my jacket in the hallway her apartment is old made from shoestring potatoes it smells like a jelly factory. Against the wall a man’s face eyes folded laces around his neck. That’s your Uncle, dear. He barred her from doing much of anything when he was around then he died. She asked the doctors to keep his eyes and brain alive and put them in a fish tank. That night when she got home she put on a mambo record, poured herself a vodka, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke in his eyes. The tank is down the hall full of algae and bubbles. She has it hidden behind a curtain. On the wall are photos of President Gerald Ford, our family on vacation, and antique pictures of naked ladies. How many naked ladies do have to look at before I get something to eat? I ask. I’ll think about it, she says. Behind the curtain skirts are hung up, sponges tied together, a bag of teeth. My Auntie takes a photo of me so my parents will see the child they raised, buzz-cut, roadworthy. My Auntie tells me stories about my family, takes me shopping, for sweaters and sneakers. When she gets excited she makes the sound of a happy seagull and spins like a mooring buoy. ————————————– Bill Ratner called us from Los Angeles, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

A fig in an orange grove— I pruned myself from the rotting branch, sawed through the only bark I knew. Now I stand among the citrus on the longest night, their branches strung with stars, garlands of dried slices glowing like tiny suns, the air thick with clove and cedar. I watch the easy way they intertwine, how a hand finds the back of a neck, how embraces happen without flinching. I ache in rooms full of warmth. Grafted here now, tethered to sap not my own, wrapped in evergreen and borrowed moss— the trees around me teaching what roots can do when the frost comes, how love moves through heartwood without asking permission. Then the gathering scatters. Everyone carries their candlelight home. My husband’s hand knows my bark. My in-laws wrap me in their shade. This grove has given me everything. And still— somewhere, two trees stand stubbornly rooted in place; they planted me and refuse to water; they’d lose me before submitting to pruning themselves. I am full of sap, of sweetness, of more love than I was built to hold, and still bleeding from a cut I made to save my life. ————————————– Tian Sanchez-Ballado called us from Tallahassee, FL. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Once I visited my old roommate at a film festival on Scheveningen beach where the winning movie was something avant garde and vaguely religious we did not understand. Afterwards we danced to Madonna's “Like a Prayer” within the sand dunes all night, the wind transforming the blanket around my shoulders into wings, my roommate recounting how their friends in Atlanta held their newborn for the first time. We biked miles back into town and laid next to a canal. As we smoked weed, they confessed they might never be able to live in our home country again. I know, but tonight let’ s pretend we’re the loves of our lives, I retorted, swinging a stick to hit another out of the air. Murmuration began overhead, the birds changing phase according to the relative strengths of our anger, wonder, and fear. The sky moved without permission. We let the mosquitoes circle and bite our legs bloody until light. Small volumes of ourselves hung in the air around us as we ignored all the ways to start over. ————————————– Cole Pragides called us from San Francisco, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

for Hamze we are as dark inside as the night is, meaning, we are so beautiful most people choose not to see us, for fear of overwhelming themselves—& we are sitting in the front seat of your car, shifting toward music. we are going home, if home is the equation for to be left alone. I put my finger on the pulse of the nearest star & decide on Stevie or Kendrick. because we have so little time to reflect on the recklessness of our still being alive & underneath stars & singing, we just sing. I teach you the words to my oldest freedoms, or we scream skyfuls of threats & boasts, queued from our permissionless names, & for a moment, we watch depression unfold: our killed souls spinning their dust back into us, claiming the feet, the hands, the tender mouth. be careful what we tell ourselves— everyone I know will be dead soon, it will not end soon, it will not end—the myths we craft with hopelessness. & who ever said joy had no utility? if our homelands do not remember our names, we are both hated in this awful place, let us make crooks of our famed blood, let us refuse our bones their crackle, let us speak the silliness we inherited, let us open wide the blackest sky & release every shadow of the innocent caught in our throats, & let us revel, revel, revel in the thrilled motion of our excellent & working hearts. ————————————– Ariana Brown called us from Houston, TX. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Our eyes meet on the rear-view mirror Scorched earth passes by Stretched by the mile, rolled windows for letting the poem breathe. Tainted. A light contour is drawn on your white tank top, above, fifty-three well-placed chest hairs are just enough. God, this drink is awful. Then why do you keep drinking it? He says, as he maintains a firm grip on my thigh with one hand as he drives with the other. Hollow teeth and all. I don't know (I do) I wanted to try something new, Feel something, be someone. We order Chinese takeout, you insist on paying and I let you grope my manhood, sheltered by a well fitting pair of washed Levi’s in return. Me gusta la coquetería, me gustas tú. Two solitary ice cubes cling, melting by the nightstand, Long gone are the excuses obscured by curtains. A card is drawn, our breaths equalize. We watch Ripley on a screen fashioned with a rosary on one of its corners. While he bounces, he looked at me with those blank eyes so enamoured, So lost At sea, Like the body of Dickie Greenleaf deep inside the Amalfi coast. His drowned gaze, Somewhere in between Lust And midnight, Penetrates me, to the point where I couldn’t distinguish who was penetrating who. So I find myself here, while your head lays on my chest. I know what you want to hear, but for you, it doesn’t. You play with my pubes and I kiss your forehead. Sometimes We laugh, comparing ourselves to the TV series that we barely acknowledge - Good thing we don’t have a tragedy of our own nor bizarre love triangles - Right. Inhale, exhale. He kisses my neck, mi amor, mi vergoncito, mi Bocanegra. I can’t say that I don’t feel the same, Showing restraint is of no use upon wretched land. Outside the Jacarandas bloom, The sunset has punched its card. This is something I cannot give you. Added weight forces my chest you arise even further, it knows where I am, This body of mine, For its going the extra mile, So there’s no honor among thieves, Fine, if you insist, I will go wherever you go, I will try the chicken tikka masala, I will reply to your “mi amores”, I will play your games, I will be the stud who steals you a kiss in public. I will love you the way you want to be loved. Solo no me pidas la noche. ————————————– Erick Flores Diaz called us from Morelia, Michoacán. México. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

The afternoon of my grandmother’s funeral, my sisters, mom, nephew, and I decide to paint with a Bob Ross episode, hoping to dull our grief with bright colors, to soothe our broken spirits with his bulbous brown hair, his velvet voice and reassurances. The painting seems simple enough: a cabin in the woods in the light of the moon, a peaceful scene easily accomplished in a half-hour episode. Later, thirty minutes stretches into three hours of pausing and painting, rewinding and repainting, until falling away one by one we give up the ghost, each departing the table with some distorted portrait of our grief. My cabin in the woods looks like an outhouse, my sky a lake upon the ground. Soon only my mother sits alone, striving for perfection on the day she’s buried her mother’s ashes, an interment doubly done, an ending soon to be etched in stone. I watch her paint and wonder what future afternoon I’ll cue an eternal episode, pick up my brush, and try to put pain to canvas, letting Bob lull me into thinking just for a moment that even the trees could be happy that day. ————————————– Trystan Popish called us from Denver, CO. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Where were you when Jeff Hiller won his first Emmy? Or when Taylor got engaged to Travis? Tell me, why hasn’t Ralph Fiennes won an Oscar? Why did Adam Lambert lose to Kris Allen? Yes, there are things that may not make sense, there are things that may not seem fair. Why did some of the vaccinated sicken, some of the anti-vaxxers not? It isn’t right that you lost your husband, Job. Or your ten-year-old twin girls. Or your Ramsey-earned investments. Or your health to Long COVID. There is no answer I can give you. This isn’t Family Feud. I am no Steve Harvey; I am just God. Even so, I can stay with you. Like a viral video, I can linger. But if you want to ghost me, feel free to. If you want to block me, go ahead. Give yourself permission. Do not apologize. As Demi says, “Sorry Not Sorry.” Grieve how you want to. Though you’ll have another family, it won’t replace the one you lost. It won’t undo your parents’ rejection. However loving, a chosen family isn’t quite the same. Remember Carl Winslow? Remember Philip Banks? Each a father that yours wasn’t. Each a father you wish you had. Each a father that was there for you. Unlike Blockbuster and Redbox, I, too, am here. And I’m watching you rebuild. Even though you can’t rewind, you can make another life worth watching to the credits. And I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. ————————————– Jonathan Fletcher called us from San Antonio, TX. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Rolled in gold leaf, cocooned in shreddings of ancient text. His words, a pathetic stream slurring out between pulls, Prophets lust but I beg you, beg. Lick the good soil off your lover’s hand. Taste what the tree roots know, Bend your back at lightning snaps. Submit to the murmurs of rabbit children. And God and I smoked until the vapors chased the heavens and nothing dared open the sky. ————————————– Oisín Rowe called us from Boston, MA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

BATEMAN God... I guess... I was probably returning videotapes. American Psycho (2000), Mary Harron & Guinevere Turner and Bret Easton Ellis i never admitted fault / at confession either / the priest would / say whatever & i’d look down on / varnished rot-vein floorboards or / lie that i lied about / something i did not lie about what / did i have to be / sorry for everything / that happened happened / to me / i wasn’t penitent / i just felt / bad confession / i choke up every time / Boyz II Men surprises Will / for little Nicky’s christening / & memorized every way / they have to say i’m / sorry confession / when i was 11 / i downloaded torrents & a / trojan confession / at 25 i danced in the shower / to MJ’s performance of “Man / in the Mirror” & was / surprised when I slipped / as Michael’s palms swept the / stage confession / when i was 19 / a virus / wiped my computer / again confession / i think i’m the plum / my friend bit at 14 / beautiful skin & flies in the pit / bodies in the spit he / wretched confession / i had so many / secrets i thought i was / happy confession / i was never found / by a woman / to be what i am / i told her & left her / lonely confession / sure it was more but always / i made sure / i was / clean confession / my boy told me hey / but you’re still a good / dude confession / the devil speaks / to you in your own / voice he’s no / ventriloquist confession / at 27 i tore down drywall / strapped on a mask / & stripped out lath / i sawed wall studs & pocketed dust / sat fetal on the piled curb / & a guy said come on / man don’t do / that / i said thanks & went on / sobbing on / concrete between two cans boiling over with my / trash confession / i wiped my face i felt / better i did not / change ————————————– Tim Lynch called us from Wilmington, DE. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

The human brain generates 20 watts of electricity. Or so the AI Overview tells me unprompted when I search how much a thought costs me, how much energy each flex of my fingers are required to press each of these keys. Do you know how much energy is wasted by the AI Overview being generated? I ask. It hesitates. I find an answer under the links to buy a novelty brain mug. Oh, just 6 bottles of water to cool the servers every ten seconds. And they promise to be eco-friendly. Did you know almost all their water filters are falsely advertising their efficiency? Yeah, there is no reliable way to remove all the shit to make it drinkable again. All the bacteria, the chemicals, the forever plastics dancing in your cells. Dear search, how much energy does plastic consume inside the body? The AI has no answer because we have no answer. Like a game of snake an ouroboros on an old Nokia. Those invincible bricks, where did they go? Other than swallowed up deep inside, of course. Bit by micro-bit. Did you know the human brain with a thought could light a small bulb? 40 Joules in 2 seconds. AI Overview pick-pocketed that info for me because it doesn’t actually think anything or know that the human brain is so efficient in ways we don’t even understand. Or maybe I’m too harsh. After all, we still don’t know what an appendix does, but we still carve it out when we need to. We know we can live without it if removed before it explodes on a random Tuesday. Well, depending on if your shit boss doesn’t hesitate to call the ambulance. And did you know that on the stretcher to the ER as you clutch your side and bile of bits and brick scratch your throat, you might use your last moments the 2 second spark of the brain electrified and dancing to ask the question through sweat and pain: “Do you know how much this will cost me?” ————————————– Carmen Barefield called us from Salem, MA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Christmas Day at a dive bar & God has blessed us all with holy days & spirits poured over this small glimpse at eternity blurring bright against the near-silent night naive nativities of promised tomorrows fester & foster today's futilities yet here we arrive from memories of everywhere we've ever been before now & suddenly this maybe in another world, all our dreams come true & every prayer is answered & all considered is well with peace & joy, et cetera but if this world is not that if heaven is hidden from sight do this as often as you do this in remembrance of... the warm embrace of another despite the nearness of life without ————————————– Mikey Franz called us from Philadelphia, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

my wife’s coworkers ask about my poetry and I tell them oh, it’s slice-of-life kind of stuff. Bird on a wire kind of stuff. They ask but what are they about? and I tell them so, they say that the only philosophical question worth asking is whether or not to commit suicide. I guess my poems are all questions that don’t have answers yet. and I made things awkward again. One of them asks if I’m active at the university poetry center and I say no, but I know a few local poets. We don’t really like each other much and everyone laughs. I tell them that all the modern poets have cut marks on their thighs. I tell them to look for the scars. That maybe the old ones had them too and it’s the skirts that got shorter. That the ones who survive today get tattoos over their wrists to hide the failure, how no one’s proud of their scars anymore. I tell them that an old poet friend once said that every artist is either overcooked or under-easy and that I always forget to turn the oven off. That I used to give my poetry books to all the girls I wanted to touch, like a preface for my hands, and when I first met the girl who’s now the woman I’m married to I gave her my poems and she came to my apartment and found me playing PlayStation, chainsmoking drunk, and she said I really thought you’d be more in touch with nature, then how I took her hand and dragged her fingers across the scars on my biggest organ and said do you think I got these hugging a tree? just in time before dinner arrived. ————————————– Joshua Lillie called us from Tucson, AZ. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

"A Tooth of Mary Magdalene" suspended in rock crystal. So much we didn’t see, the last time. Some say she crossed the ocean to France in 33 AD and mourned him. Even there, he found and called to her disguised as a winged creature. Cupid’s bowl of spilled pleasure — we didn’t see it, or this dove, this gilded eucharistic dove with a hinged door in its back, a vacancy we didn’t see. We didn’t see this silver arm, reliquary for a part of Saint Valentine, or this erotic mithuna sculpted in thirteenth-century India, an aroused couple about to be one body. Here’s a pink-and-white dress for a baby girl from 1956. The last time the soldier’s mistress wore this byzantine gold chain, wet with blue gems, was in the year 1,000. We didn’t see it, or the housekeeper who became Rembrandt’s common-law bride. She never had such opulent jewels. In 1650 he painted her, a hearty archetype of wife, holding her robe closed. Can I ever be so placid, so sturdy in relationship? In the museum I think, Yes. But back out in the city I’m this purple orchid opening easily in the florist’s hand, humid with tears when the man in the bodega speaks to me sweetly, calls me honey. The last time I lived in tenderness was 2019, with you whose body was shelter and scent, who sang, knelt, took your time, and fed. Is the whole world just one crumb in the belly of that dove? I turn because he calls to me, this pigeon flecked as the firmament in storm. In 2025 he leads me to a statue of a naked girl outside an apartment, an angelic adolescent chained like Andromeda to the iron gate. Her last time was long ago. Such a sense of being behind glass when I look into her eyes. There was so much we didn’t see, but it saw us. We shone for it. The past recognizes its imminent relatives. It warms as it watches you and me becoming artifacts of love. ————————————– Rose DeMaris called us from Belgrade, MT. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

When I Try to Verify Why They Carpet Driveways After the Rain, Google Keeps Feeding Me Distressingly Hot Factoids About Hermaphroditic Earthworm Sex Until I thought to check, I thought I knew: worms emerge from dirt to tar on the run from drowning. Actually no one understands their reasons. Maybe worms emerge from dirt to tar when vibrations ape a predator. Or are their reasons maybe traveling fast on slicked slab? Reproducing? When vibrations ape a predator, or are mock applause when I drop a glass traveling fast on slicked slab, reproducing language is beyond me. My speech breaks with static snow, mock applause, when I drop a glass knife voice. Sticking to the surface language is beyond me. My speech breaks with static snow, turns trail. Trail: proof and proof of absence. Here’s my opened-by-a- knife voice sticking to the surface of the steel. Spill turns trail. Trail: proof and proof of absence. Here’s my opened-by-a- mouth mouth. I say of the steel spill that I can be allowed to want. I’m saying mouth: Mouth. I say all that I can be allowed to want. I’m saying I’m all mouth, I’m just open mouth, and I’m just-open. I feed and I’m equalizing pressure. I feed like falling and I fuck like falling, equalizing pressure, meant to shed a wreck of men like falling, and I fuck like falling was becoming of the nymph stage. I claim I was meant to shed a wreck of men, their aims. I knew what needy grubs, what writhing life I’d swallowed clean, was becoming. Of the nymph stage, I claim I was on the run from drowning. Actually no one understands their aims. I knew what needy grubs, what writhing life I’d swallowed clean until I thought to check. I thought I knew. ————————————– Callie Jennings called us from Boston, MA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

we did not hold hands often we clenched legs under the table hands were too public for two who did not know how feelings socailize we sat on a bench on the corniche watching the nile at noon it was full and calm we could hear the wind sing to the trees on its sides you held my hand and I looked as you took it towards you the wind stopped singing and my heart wanted to come out and taste the water I said look how my hand looks no matter how many times I wash it you said look how mine sweats and then asked if it bothered me I held your wrist and folded your hand and brushed it with mine again and again until it is my hand that is wet you smiled and looked down happy and shy like a bird folding into itself I asked you for a kiss I could not say it I wrote it in a notebook you once wrote your name in words were too intimate for two who did not know how love talks the notebook became a pigeon back and forth between us it held words our mouths dared not admit you wrote a falouka is where you get one you knew the nile had none that day no one teaches a girl how to want without bruising the family name so you swallowed it and it bloomed somewhere I could not reach and I loved before I had the language then it came in a dialect I had to translate for myself so I spat it out and kept the bitter ache I would go through your things and asked about them I claimed to get to know you better through the small and ordinary to break what ice may be left you said I know but I secretly hoped I would be mistaken for your watermelon lipstick and go home with you but you went home and I stayed I pass by the bench and ask it why are you still here it says nothing but I hear echoes of your laughter so I sit and watch the nile full and calm but the wind no longer sings it just blows and I get cold easily nowadays but I wait a falouka might pass ————————————– Muhammad Rabih called us from Egypt. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

after Ocean Vuong and why this want for permanence surround sound my life with backups sound out my name and it’s almost a library flower pressed screen dazed stillness a twinkie and her wrapper words she presses in the shape of a body I too will one day be glad I am no longer violet and instead fertilizer no mama’s memoir no mama to read my memoir will be ocean open ooooo like whale sounds I will linger forever in the aqua uh huh I used to be fern now I’m feather my body retreats for ever/y line I write I forget my hands can strangle recycle like madness like magic I immortalize the white I wrangle with pen body oh body earth will ground us whole ————————————– Fiona Martinez called us from San Diego, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Tonight you lay on your own couch, trying to head off fixation. Your cigar is just a. You hold it oscillating between Cuban and. You are not. You tell yourself this. You flip through your notebook, and it is filled with pictures of you riding the night. The cigar is in your fingers, which place it to your lips. You take a luxurious puff. Wake up, you whimper, and linger, eyes glazing. Up, you manage. Up. The notebook falls from your other hand. Gravity is repression, you think and try to not. You know how you will feel when you awaken. You can already feel the cold sweat coming. ————————————– JeFF Stumpo called us from Litchfield, NH. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

do not be afraid of your own heart beating there must be chocolate maybe even daily I would recommend buying the better cheese drink orange juice in the morning it will help drink wine or whiskey and write things down it is always good to know your own handwriting remember how clean sheets feel and hot baths keep lip balm by your bed keep a tissue in your pocket buy a lamp so your room is warm and buy things so they are memories later and look at your hands they are beautiful! Once a week make a nice meal because you can and don’t be afraid to be alone that would be like throwing away perfectly good socks or bras keep them and buy new underwear it’s easy to forget but let your friends remind you and remember your friends and their favorite colors and kiss someone just to taste their lips love your apartment even when the microwave breaks love food even when it is toast from the toaster love your hands and your skin put rings on your fingers wear a designer lipstick and keep it in your pocket ————————————– Charlotte Alexander called us from Moscow, ID. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

What bloomed from grief came instinct, came wrath. The aftermath of my longing will show on your back like Lichtenberg figures after the subtlety of a strike. My beautiful friend, I do think heat causes molecules to excite, and if you let me, we’ll honor the burn marks after this smudging. But not before prayer, not before kneeling behind you your scent, curiously ancient I’m suddenly wet I want you protected, well fed. So please, let me sage you. The air around you. The air around persimmons you’ve hung out to dry, leaving you / not bruised but sugar-bloomed into a world you want to breathe in. And you’re gonna wanna know what becomes of it, the tsuris of us. Probably nothing, it’s nothing, right? I keep finding you in kitchens. And I, tending to a grow bag full of fairytale eggplants, their blooms bowing down as if in shame or in love or as if grieving was a thing of shame or love or is it your scent, curiously ancient, that is the intimate why of my grieving. ————————————– C. Rivera called us from New York, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

three soldiers in tinfoil jackets roasting on the bottom oven rack she’d cut the ends off one too long for its own good hacked chunks from the pudgy pocked one sliced the largest of the lot into quarters pulling used foil from a crumpled stash she manhandled the starchy meal into silver uniforms tried to unwrap and uncrinkle but eventually abandoned hope supper could be smooth or smartly dressed when the oven sang out its warning she skinned them from the foil burned fingers in her haste to separate what she’d spent so much energy on wadded up the bits she couldn’t reuse and chucked ‘em in the bin the bin it’s where most of us find ourselves after a relationship sharing space with those silver skins not fitting any better than the aluminum did her and her meal prep her and her insistence others should hide what she plans to devour ————————————– C. Late called us from Kansas City, MO. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I want to write about eternity too just like the cats probing at their breakfasts or your two week old hands Isadora brushing my beard like sleepwalking windshield wipers or the way the sun uses maple leaves as lampshades if we can spend as much of ourselves in time as out of it if our conch shell ears keep after months the cymbal samba of the sea if your feet tender toweled and purpling remember the ant hills and thumb tacks and jelly spills they haven’t found yet if your big sister and her enormous feelings and your mom and her incomparable well of kindness and how they use each moment almost like a ladle if everything is like breath if we can use jazz the way we use a shower if everything can be a little of everything else if the naked basement bulb of my patience in its morse distress can most times be enough if the slapstick surgeon of memory can hang in if the horror show doesn’t get too hungry for more and more dimensions if we can start carpet bombing the nations of the earth with dollar bills and daisy petals instead if our favorite pizza place can please fall into the amber bath of immortality and we can live there in perennial Friday evening they’re bringing cups of ice and the ovens are awake ————————————– Dylan Emmons called us from Poughkeepsie, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Storms– Wave action– Sand crash– A kite coming close– Wobbling moon– Desire work– These optimisms– There’s your thunder– Your downpour across the street– A kid beating a tree with its stick– Panting about every day– Too hot to worry about plot– Chewing ice into the mic– Today a hundred- year-old woman died– Separately I saw so many maggots later– As a recluse I really went all out– ————————————– Jenna Cardinale called us from Brooklyn, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

after Chappell Roan The cold knows me in ways you never will. Darkness clamps her hand over the city’s mouth. Still, light. Music rises like smoke. And God is anything but subtle — this joint, our first kiss. Now my heart’s a helium balloon — pink, no strings attached. Sailing high among the lanterns — paper clouds in a makeshift sky in a lesbian bar where I keep my sunglasses on so you can’t see me cry. If we’re already in Hell, then that explains middle school, which isn’t when I knew. But the body, like God, offers signs. Neon and to the point — Open. Welcome. Thank You. When I called desire by name, the fog lifted from our past. (Seventh grade art class. I wanted to tell you.) Twelve years later, your palms are electric against my cheeks. Eyes, the color of parched earth — so here is my grief. Winter, like any crush, renders my layers useless. I forgive myself. In New York, there are no chance encounters. There are choices other than fear. ————————————– Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro called us from Wharton, NJ. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

May 10th Perseverance is terminal, Every day dully getting up. The end times keep edging us But I’m a Taurus— I prefer to come And to go another round. They shot Katy Perry Into orbit, then let her back in. We turned the mission into memes To stop thinking of burned old growth forests, Boiling oceans, where all the bees have gone. In the shuttle there was something To do with a world tour. Will the wet bulb be worth it? A senator says we all have to die sometime, Which is news to me! I am always telling people How Katy Perry killed a nun. Now she’s coming for the rest of us. I too could call myself an astronaut; We tell ourselves stories in order to et cetera. I wanted heaven But space spat me out. I heard earth girls are easy. I’m so easy I only learned how to fight Back last week. I didn’t win. But I cured my depression By making the bed! The cure lasts ‘til just past The point I’ve smoothed the duvet. I draw the curtains. I play a record. I shake my locally-sourced oat milk To eke out one more use. Does it bother me, us fucking other people? Jury’s out. But if I picture you Brushing another woman’s hair From her mouth an atom bomb detonates. I see all my bones. They are female And furious. They rattle and shriek like death Metal. Don’t fucking brush another woman’s hair From her mouth. A hole’s a hole, darling, But tenderness is non-renewable. Bottle your affection for only me. I’m sorry. I have to get up again. I hate when there’s only one outcome. ————————————– Jamie Hood called us from Brooklyn, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I have been made aware of the fact that you died in 1846, but am hoping this will reach you regardless. I have heard you are the foremost expert on solar activity, weather patterns, and astronomical cycles, as well as the best times to fish and how to build a community. I have heard you lived and worked in New Hampshire, which is where I have recently come to live and sometimes but rarely work. Did you know that ticks no longer freeze here, in the winter? The annual mean temperature has increased by about 2.6°F since your days. I check my ankles in both August and January, and am disappointed by how little it snows. I read about you on the Almanac’s website (a website is like a book that’s in the air) and wanted to reach out. They have a biography on you, they praise your name, they say there were two total solar eclipses in the US in your lifetime. They publish a new cake recipe on your birthday every year. They sell things now, too, like a Fruits Vegetables & Herbs 1000pc Puzzle for $19.95 and a Jeffersonian Brass Kinetic Wind Vane for $119.99. Don’t worry, that’s inflation, mostly. I know you just wanted to help the travelers, sailors, bookkeepers, beekeepers, and prognosticators. I don’t know if those people exist anymore. Robert Bailey Thomas, I fear summer now rots into last ditch efforts and expletives over the softness of peaches, so I’ll wrap up with some questions I hope you can answer. Why can I only see some stars out of the corner of my eye? Was your America much greener? Why, even when I am so quiet, and so good, can I not catch a fish? Why did you die, when you knew every psalm by heart and every benefit of witch hazel? Do you ever feel like July has forgotten your name? Do you know what I mean? Hey, Robert Bailey Thomas, please say you know what I mean. ————————————– Lauren Mills called us from London, UK. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Solidarity is pissing in adjacent stalls. A godly marriage is a throuple with Christ. Dude was a real trove of sword lore. We cheered for the biracial babies. At the racist wedding, the pastor praised Korean cars & submissive wives. Cousins snuck liquor into the dry reception while sober Christians gnashed their teeth. So began the diaspora. One spent a year in Singapore; another posted pics from Botswana. Were we the first to get divorced? At least on that side of the family. For twelve years she was my grandmother too. Remember how we buried her in the rain, & how afterward we ate crab cakes. ————————————– Alexa Vallejo called us from Philadelphia, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

April 2024 Wish you were here is no synonym for I miss you, though of course I do. Wish you were here Like I know you would love this LIke I want to remember this with you, not to you Wish we could rebuild the subtleties to each other and build the details Fall over each other in the telling Want you to feel this first hand, absorbing it too Count you among the partners here along for their own rides Drinking in the soprano soloist, a bringer of comfort, this time firmly hand in hand I said I wish you were here because I WISH YOU WERE HERE This time, I’ll settle for one of us November 2024 I miss you jumps to my mind and tempts my tongue, only for strangers to hear it. To be somewhere alone is to be there unseen, thoughts unheard, except by their thinker. Their thinker, like The Thinker, sits unseen by any he knows, his crowded head superimposed on whipsering autumn plane leaves. Surely I am beheld as I behold, traversing sunlit plazas, long skirted and parasol shielded If only as Narcissus in mirror-black windows. My thoughts have value even if no one reflects on them. These mountains scrape the sky even after the sun dips behind them, the gardens keep growing in darkness even after the dykes who dressed up for the art have wandered out Jesus and Mary Magdalene remain trapped amid rough marble after I stop circling them . And I grow softer and stronger by the day, even though at the end of it there's no one to feel it for a thousand miles ————————————– Juniper Danger called us from Philadelphia, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

“There can be but one teacher – nature. She must always be consulted.” - Camille Pissarro I’m wondering how best to preserve this day when I find myself summoned outside into the warming light, tossing my net beyond the low islands and the jagged edge of the Sound, hoping its threads return in gilded attire, yielding a tangle of blessings culled from both sea and hollow that are a mix of old-growth splendor and the commonplace, while I fall back to silence, watching the way the morning light breaks apart and is then quickly redrawn by wind gusts that blur and wrinkle the surface of the water, and entranced by the soft rustling of the beach grass and taste the tang of salt-scented air while white-capped tides are suffused with the same mussel-blue hue as the open fist of sky and seeing how both air and water are stitched together by these clamorous gulls rising in rapture then swooning towards shore and asking what more can be done other than to try and somehow slow earth’s hurry and call summer back. ————————————– John Muro called us from Glastonbury, CT. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

"4-tongue poem" by Chiara Crisafulli by VOICEMAIL POEMS

The last night we spoke, you said we could make this work. I sold the bed we used to sleep on, to forget, hoping it would work. I left the pink book you gave me on my desk, your letters in my drawer, the ones where you said love is work. I left the memory of us sleeping on a cliffside in my head but deleted the picture we took, dead-eyed from waking up to work at 5 AM on another coast, the night sea barely visible beyond your head laid against my thigh, sprawled black hair, it was easy work to be in love with you, but it was impossible to love you in a way you felt. We were two felled trees attached by thin string, trying to work gravity against itself. In a Key Largo parking lot, years ago, before we ever fell through each other, your hand brushed against mine. We worked so hard to be that simple again. B, forgive me. I would have given myself away (I did) just to make it work. ————————————– Jarrett Moseley called us from Charlotte, NC. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

We promise to protect each other After Willie Perdomo which means we pinky swear it which means we draw our pinkies like switchblades from brassy knuckles which means i hold your hands between the pocket space where we keep the taser between the thumb & index the hammer between the index & middle the cross between the middle & ring & the middle is my weapon of choice which means i talk a lot but my face says i can’t fight your face says we should run which means i face you standing still pressing my switchblade into yours wishing the switchblades were switchblades & not pinky promises we draw from brassy knuckles want brass knuckles but don’t want proximity want a gun but don't want that smoke want incense but only handmade want these hands to be protection enough that’s what space in poems are for: to store arsenals in this ars poetica keys between my fingers never felt comfortable like i would get sliced too if it came down to it i am walking across a blacktop i could tar myself into the sun is saying i should get home but home is on my hip i am aware of you & all the things that follow to follow & nothing more which means we promise to protect each other we pinky swear it ————————————– Lauren Dotson called us from Chicago, IL. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems