VOICEMAIL POEMS

as silent and holy as an empty church. a polished row of pews. you, moon in the sky, how do you do it? your one-handed gravity holding still the earth. astral magic trick, you newly christened old god. every family’s forgotten dance is a scar on your surface. memory like a bear trap. worldfodder magnet. wise old sledgehammer once smashed through our orbit longways. we were just a pie cooling on the galactic windowsill. now we say Light & mean your face, stretched our whole lives and once reached your shadow. pockmarked queen of all ships. all flags. can’t sing a note of worship if it doesn’t include a word of pain. the night sky’s opening bell and serene last call, nursing your craters like old wounds nursing your craters like children. your face held high and regal through eons of the same steady bruise and somehow you arrive to us with a bouquet of escape of routes. i have so much to learn from you, and not just about physics. how long did it take you to learn such luminescent confidence? your brilliant backlit halo, the way you just float and move everything, shine your own ligaments to dust. when people say they love each other to the You and back, is it about distance or about damage? about some man’s lonely footprint? and what do we know about damage next to you, anyway? all our blood clots thick with time but you have no winds to whisper your name. sometimes the healing does not rush through you. prehistoric ocean or otherwise. there are no channels you didn’t cut yourself. no way to say Over in the dead space. no one there to hear it but a silent star. and a billion other stars. ————————————– Zachary Goldberg called us from Oakland, CA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

remember bodies at night how they glow how they bend into us like refracted light the memory of where a body was after it has left its phosphorescence you cocoon into the spaces around things find yourself in auburn eyes and hazel skin the red that flows from you you learn that aloneness is a softness a sky that pulls you through you see bodies as they are things that love you and then stop when you wake up it’s heavy water write down the deep green blue feelings like paua shells there is a pale existing in your head a light moving in your hair behind a colour in the lunar month you return home the whenua moves its arms up to greet you climb up the hill to see the faraway beach feel lonely like mislaid keys it’s good to be there in the quiet saying to yourself i’m real i’m real as the feelings inside shrink red into shape ————————————– Stacey Teague called us from Clonakilty, Ireland. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

yeah i’ve got a lighter. can fix your filter. give you honey stick secrets and light tight roll laughter when you call me blue dream like your favorite strain like your favorite character ramona you know the blue of your dreams? yeah they’re both pierced. few things hurt so good like a needle. addict in a cute way. smoker with a toothbrush. dreamer with insomnia. liar and a poet. dream girl without problems. will ignore your worst for a sprinkle of the same. won’t shut the cartoon off till you ask for the remote or a shaved head. will lay alone with you and all of the dirty dishes. or i can wake up pretty if you want me to. i can be your party now and your home in the morning. feed you jewels of deep red pomegranates and suck the stains from the bed sheets. let you call me by any name you want when you fuck me. lick your wounds so you don’t have to. pretend you don’t have them until you don’t. and i will say goodbye before the jump so you don’t have to see me splatter. or if you want, i could rewrite the closing scene. i could change this to a happy ending. i can make you everything you want. i will make me anything if you ask me to. ————————————– Taylor Jaczin called us from St. Petersburg, FL. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

In the palm of my hand I harbor Fault lines, one-way streets, A famous bridge half-crossed and Another I steered from the passenger’s seat While the driver smoked weed Such honking dreams in the patchouli, Of frolicking unhindered, of Slapping my feet in my Sunday shoes Down my aunt’s hardwood hallway. The earthquakes always come. I’ve cracked off into the ocean. Every day’s dawn yawns a Salty horizon, and the fog rises off the water And the fog rides into town, and the fog bowls me down, And sits on my chest, reading off a checklist of regrets I am so thirsty And my irises are turning gray and It never snows in San Francisco no matter what The souvenirs say. ————————————– Caroljean Gavin called us from Winston-Salem, NC. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

A man in a powder blue suit offered to tell me my future on Olive Avenue. When I tried to say no, he said Baby, please, in a way that told me that he might know something that I didn’t, so I held out my palm. I used to hold out the same palm on the playground for other girls to read. They would tell me that I was destined to have five kids and a loving husband. Maybe a mini van. They told me my future with such certainty that it was difficult not to see some truth, some sincerity, some genuine desire to wish a happy future upon each other. So I believed them. The man on Olive said he could see Los Angeles and its sprawl. He could see me there, too, but he wouldn’t tell me what I was doing without another five dollars. I looked happy, though, he said. Happy in Los Angeles and laughing in the sun. There, in Fresno, I sought to find an intersection of these futures. ————————————– Mariah Bosch called us from Fresno, CA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

I stay in bed til 2 then get up and open all the windows. Make coffee and walk around the 5 x 10 space I call my living room. Turn my attention to the postcards and photographs on the fridge. Stare hard at all that evidence. Whisper: See, there’s no reason to be lonely. Smoke one cigarette and then another on the steps out front. Begin to cry over my own good luck. I never told you this but the truth is I would follow you to the edges of any map. I never told you this but that’s what scares me. And it’s not just that I love you. More often it’s a mixed melody of the same idea, which sounds quite a lot like: thank you. Forgive me one last time. Come back. This time I mean it. ————————————– Sara Hutchinson called us from Santa Cruz, CA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

I. I fall in love every time I fly. Leaving Dallas: the medical student wearing headphones and a full headscarf just to forget her be-planed predicament. Above Tucson: the sorority sister with the strawberry hair whose father is waiting at the baggage claim; they leave, arms over shoulders over arms. In Denver. The woman in security: her bright eyes contradict the softening skin on her hands like Kleenex, like my mother’s. I desperately want to be travelling away from here with someone, with one of these walkabout-women at my side on a midnight-plane to anywhere: companionable silence, holding hands in anticipation. II. My parents call from twelve-and-a-half hours in the past to tell me that when they dropped me off for my flight to Seoul on the way out— they saw a woman striding confidently through the winding Sea-Tac security, carrying what they were sure was her whole life on her back, Emryse. She was going off somewhere. On her next adventure. I like to imagine her lived-in day-pack, her tried-and-tested shoes; her threadbare smile. I like to think she was happy because they told me they knew that would be me, one day, and they told me she had been alone. ————————————– Emryse Geye called us from Portland, OR. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

When are you going to move closer? The space aches between us. It invents its own language. The jagged edge of the ocean paints the sand dark, retreats into its own swollen urge, arcs forward to tease the shore with the inexorable inevitable that drives my hands into the unwritten dark to pull the tide of you over me. Drown me, roll me against you. Make me your pearl. ————————————– Tria Wood called us from Houston, TX. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

Sons blushed and became soft peaches in the hot backseats of cars, never even wanted the front seat. Or, I was the son, but it’s nice to be plural and grand and count the dandelions in right field as friends, which I picked in the ancient way of boys who’s fathers tried to metaphorically light fires under their asses, there I go again, I was the boy, who was mediocre at boy at best, first boy, if it makes a difference being a minute closer to your father’s father, and I don’t remember if I plucked maybe a little out of spite because my dad told me metaphorically to quit picking dandelions, or if when he mentioned them they sounded like pixy stix in the outfield during a tee ball game, which due to the smallness of five-year-olds mostly happens very close to home plate, and dandelions pluck so satisfyingly like plonking open a can of coke (let us use plonk’s secondary definition of playing on a musical instrument – the coke tab – laboriously or unskillfully) and their frilly heads spin when you shush them in your hands like you’re warming them. If you build it then some of the angels will come to plop down in the outfield, finger the dirt and rest their heads on tender blades while the pop flies pock the earth around them. ————————————– Andy Powell called us from New York, NY. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

When you’re out in the sticks - the woods are a fortress - sunlight stabs down at you in bright daggers - I bet no one told you how a canopy is like armor. I had a place in the woods where rules couldn’t touch me - little warrior boy with sticks beating up all the full grown men that ever left mama broken. On the ground with a jar of bugs - benevolent demigod me who only knew enough to tear out earthy pieces of the woods and shove them in. Love is often a tearing away - open heart surgery featuring pieces of us that don’t fit - and a partner who can play dead really well. I played house - made a time machine too - went back in time - made mistakes - I must have - how else did playing house get so hard all of a sudden - why else would everything be my fault? I preached in two different churches at the age of eight. I forgot the God is love part - was too busy memorizing bible verses - writing fire and brimstone sermons. Whenever I was on my way to an ass whooping - I always wished I was someone else - someone strong enough to put the switch down. Did you know hide and seek isn’t fun at all - if one person suddenly decides they don’t wanna play anymore? When you grow up and the woods can’t hide you - you learn to disappear on the inside - you try and make yourself a fortress. Best I could muster was a jar of ripped up roots and leaves - with a bug that knew how small he was - who was much loved - until the day he wanted out. ————————————– James Barrett Rodehaver called us from Dallas, TX. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

I feel as if I should tell you That I have never yet, seen - A Beaver in the Wild/ but have, for sure seen plenty things: -Too many a shrub and quail, -Elk drunk at the Waterfall, -Horses arrogant in the sun -So many a video of Fruit Bats gnawing on…Fruits. -So many dams Made by clawed hands, or less clawed hands. I still strong-arm the river at the diaphragm in wanting - and choke/ Think I grow more confident in The frame I wake in - Every rock turns and shifts to coerce the spirit Outside the Vessel & up the The shore pregnant, affirmed. Hope I am loud enough to Beckon help As the water’s edge keeps climbing. I’m sorry - it is rude to Think me a river. I fear the space I take knowing my Gender both me and coursing, but want not to Scare whatever gets Swallowed by my shadow. I’ve been swallowed, and have seen all not bashfully shroud by my lashes – Sometimes I burst in a partners mouth And a dam breaks – Floods all my being With heavy hand. I do not hear it coming/ go warm as doubt drowning, & hear my name called to me over crashing timber, This Time. It is enough to keep running by morning. Enough when my friends call me a Mother in earnest. It is a truth with heavy hands, Lapping at the levee without relent, But Most Times I cradle my stomach in rushing water and do not feel a Fertile Shore. I weep and search the mirror for a place to rescue my wanting/ Wonder so often if all who love Me must breathe water, Or just as unlikely make a home in my body By their mouths Or clawed hands, Or whatever will a wild thing has To take shelter in impossible places. I had not yet seen one for me in my wandering - this being that treads stream and earth confident //without fear until just here in my room - Through the eyes of another. Bless this Babe of the Wood with soft touch that makes all of my landscape Proud And Untethered. I’ve held this force of nature - & every minute knowing the deficit of The sense to believe those close/in love - Without always seeing & It is enough of a miracle To hear your name from a loved one’s Mouth, to trust//breath and well, I suppose I could have led with just that. ————————————– John Quinonez called us from Boston, MA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

1. Trigger happy target 2. Archangel of the burnt and bruised 3. Newport ash on a papi store floor 4. Pants way passed where his mama taught 5. It’s my car sir 6. Ocean front scalp 7. Jesus in hiding 8. Unintentional vaudeville show 9. Fireflies in his palms 10. A friend’s blood 11. Tomorrow’s bedside prayer 12. Tonight’s prime time special 13. It’s just my phone sir 14. I just want to go home 15. I didn’t ask 16. A gunpowder freestyle 17. A stained glass dice game 18. A white man’s orgasm 19. My hands at 16 20. His voice before the shots 21. Stop sign eulogy 22. Mom alone in the chapel 23. No angel 24. All blood ————————————– Dagmawe Berhanu called us from Philadelphia, PA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

Sometimes I wish I could stop you from talking when I hear the silly things you say Alison, I know this world is killing you Oh Alison, my aim is true - Elvis Costello, “Alison” I was named for a catcall strung out into three verses and a chorus Ballad drowning in mystery fansites say she’s a pretty stranger his eye caught at the grocery store maybe an ex-fling scraping out a fetus with half his DNA Elvis Costello says my aim is true he might mean it literally No one wastes time on what Alison might say but I am Alison so to Elvis Costello to anyone who has ever claimed to love me Take my name out of your mouth. Your eyes lied when they looked at me and told you muse Damsel I’m the troll under the bridge Asked for peace Got this trap, trap trap Every echo hissing my name in a hated cadence saying: we sing because we love Who wouldn’t want a passion sharp enough to carve the melody of you into the air? I was a child the first time I was dragged from my body and into verse the first time someone thought their love meant they could take my name bend it into a circle to crown them prince or failing that martyr against the heresy of my refusal I ran into the arms of a boy who never sang did what Elvis couldn’t: gift me a contagious silence whistling a hole through my head to land in my own mouth I survived him only to stumble through more poets stitching me into metaphor muting me to make way for the romance they knew they deserved If I were love, I’d say: take my name out of your mouth Set it ablaze I would rather be ash than what you’ve made of me Alison means “of noble birth” A princess of course needs not just a hero but a narrator Her voice only good for singing to the forest creatures The moral only ever Sit Wait Someone will love you enough to speak for you to dirty your name What a happy ending. ————————————– Alison Kronstadt called us from Boston, MA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

A few years ago a machine peaked into my head and found a section dead. Most likely from a lack of oxygen in utero, but really, that’s speculation – what’s done is done and there’s no undoing it. Like when I was eighteen and someone pilfered the contents of my lingerie drawer. They took it all: the see-through, the satin, the blood-spotted cotton panties and all the socks and bras. It creeped me out, but I cared less about how it all went missing and worried more just about their being gone. ————————————– Kelly Jones called us from Burlington, NC. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

For Owen Steinmann (2016-2017) Sugars trickle from maples’ taut trunks, sapping summer energy, the crystallized light of wanting to stay alive. But what melody the drops make a man from a pulpit always says as they leap out the spout, percuss the bucket’s galvanized bottom. Yes, such sweet vasculature and saccharine, this living always toward death. He calls for recalling thinner times, the feel of liveliness not yet stuck in the spiles and given up. Forgetting doesn’t rid our bones of any ache. Look—I’m trying to hold open every leaking word all winter long but this bark cracks, defenseless against air and overfull. For each legible ring, more lost. For each lived ache, a flume of language unspun by air among us. ————————————– Katherine Indermaur called us from Laramie, WY. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

I finally want to talk about it has taken me a decade more than most and all my wisdom teeth have fallen victim by now there is a draft buried beneath this you will never know of a pleasure of released dioxide and simile I don’t write because the block asks I do this out of an empathy for myself, a backlog of tears and this body knows that the deal is ending soon it just thinks it can wait out having to pay the delivery fee and this is just like me to go on and on nodding to the tune of ephemera in my head without letting go I can count on one hand how many fingers I have lifted to speak to my grandmother or times I even perused a bible yet I could tell you more about how many times I opened my mouth for favor this week alone. ————————————– Olatunde Osinaike called us from Nashville, TN. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

…july. wilted cereal in a bowl / we drown in brown boiling milk. the haze of sparklers and fire- works add to the deafening heat that drips into august. caged in by smog, air smells of cigarettes and melted tar. surely this place is meant to ignite. september, when he arrives, he thinks this is a flat plain, where desert dirt covers everything like snow and sweat is meant for breathing. but then- october, and the devil’s breath laps up lotion, claws skin with its vicious teeth. yowling roofs beat whoosh and bend of threatened windows. tree leaves sound like ocean. stripped-dry littered bare limbs. the hard ones snap, ripe for a switch. usedtabe gangs of tumbleweeds ran the streets; now, solitary wadded balls of rootless limbs roll by. november is a postcard miracle, surrounded snow capped crisp sky where our eyes hang glide like eagles. we perch low in the valley shadow straining to see the walk of fame. sunset and hollywood. palm springs. peer into the pier of the pacific. every mountain peak is paramount. he says, if it weren’t for the devil’s breath, i’d never know where we are, and just how beautiful ————————————– Romaine Washington called us from Rancho Cucamonga, CA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

The eyes have it: weight, such that they can’t even roll. This is one of those moments when I should probably listen to my body but you know how it goes when someone talks too much for your taste (coffee, sir?). There’s lots of work to do today. There’s money to be had and even more easily lost like a sensible child to the pursuit of higher learning after high school. Time is really something, isn’t it? Death is entirely something different, but I don’t believe in dying in the sense that I haven’t done it yet, so I’m unsure if I can. I’m rather incompetent when it comes to handling important matters and a de facto doctorate in the trivial; I’m always the trial and I’m always the error. If ever I’ve felt content, maybe even happy, it was a glitch. And then it was gone. ————————————– Cortney Lamar Charleston called us from Jersey City, NJ. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

brilliant elixer fuck me up fuck me dead why does academia hate me i’m ready to sacrifice my body to a career something boring like teaching teenagers why romeo and juliet did or didn’t die make my grandparents proud of me again i pour this into my glass and pour my glass into the bathtub full of rejection letters that call me ‘jessica’ instead of jessie this is the year of being normal let’s get married and request fuzzy bath towels let’s get married and i’ll wear the white dress and makeup and smile for 12 hours until my teeth fall out or my chin rots academia what did i ever do to you would i not make you proud either are you scared of me am i not worthy enough to pay you to rub me raw kill me deader than i already am academia all i want to do is walk down your pathways and smell your million dollar flowers i am not so full that i cannot hunger i am not so tired that i cannot stay up for two years straight in this scenario you are my grandparents and you are proud of me and i am sitting at the piano with straight white teeth and slender fingers men can be proud of and i never get too drunk and i always stay in this line in this scenario we never fuck up we never drink the sun on accident we never forget to turn faucets off magical drinkable liquid elixer you promised me more than this ————————————– jessie knoles called us from Bellingham, WA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

I was on my back that morning standing still & running half-turned, fetal & spread eagle & curled up along the edge of the hospital bed and the doctor says “It’s time,” & I already know because it has always been time, time to push & she is explaining to me how to push, how to undulate you from my body & as she explains I bring my chin to my chest even though my chin was already there & had never been there & never would be just like you were already there & had never been & never would not be there because I already knew & know how to push & so I push & was pushing because I’d always been pushing & you appeared blue and be-limbed because I push you there right there, little boy, into the world & onto my abdomen right where you’d forever never been before and after amen. ————————————– Laura Davis called us from San Francisco, CA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

Our hosts Logen Cure and I.S. Jones review their favs from our Winter 2018 issue! (Get caught up on Winter 2018 here: soundcloud.com/voicemailpoems/sets/voicemail-poems-fall-2017) This installment features poems by: Kirwyn Sutherland https://soundcloud.com/voicemailpoems/taunts-to-the-klan-by-kirwyn-sutherland zach blackwood https://soundcloud.com/voicemailpoems/whelp-after-aziza-barnes-by-zach-blackwood Sam Rush https://soundcloud.com/voicemailpoems/sonnet-for-trans-lifeline-february-2017-by-sam-rush Music by TrueKey. (@truekey). >> The deadline to submit to our Summer Issue is June 1st: http://voicemailpoems.org/call >> Help us made more of these by supporting us on Patreon! http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems >> Review us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voicemail-poems-.org/id847081003

Another storm has the neighbors' chickens all lumped together and subdued, so I can't hear them from my attic room. Rain has thrown itself for days against the roof. "What is the cruelest month?" people ask. Last year I watched a man put one poor frozen bird in a garbage bag at the end of winter; it had been stuck in a corner of the coop. That's what Spring does: uncover what you thought was gone, flood the dirt and leave you to wonder which is meaner- the freeze or its long thaw. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

End of the year gray. Anchors Where balloons should be, or: Could peace wait on the outer Bank of sane. How in the holiday Buzz to say nothing for clear, that is: Give me back remembering, Its attendant costumed sting. The portraiture made overkill By rain. No incoming. The quantum State the same. The slide to black, The self-quilled quell to love The heartburn sun, its citrus sky. If only. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

i. In the other world, everything smells like cherries. Every phone call is the news of someone's death, and every cigarette is candy. In the other world, you tell me you do not love me every day, and our bed is made from cedar trees. The horses run rider- less and frightened, chased by men with bottles for weapons and collarbones made of ice. The plains are a burnt orange in the other world, and everyone reeks of a longing to understand. ii. In the other world, she never died, and everything tastes like gunmetal. Everyone washes themselves in coldness and sleeps in the bath. In the other world, I tell you to keep the dogs at bay, and our bed is made from palm leaves. The ocean laps at sand that is still glass, riddled with shipwreck. The mountains tumble down themselves in the other world, and everyone speaks to each other in tongues. iii. In the other world, everything sounds like a heart- beat. Everything is made of tinsel, multi-colored, and glows in the dark. In the other world, we tell each other every secret, and our bed is made from cattails. Grief slithers in and out of our ears, only frightened away by singing. The grasslands mumble mutely to themselves in the other world, and everyone knows only their own names. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

Part 1: Untitled It was yesterday or something, when I heard the song playing in a store, asking do I make myself a blessing to everyone I meet? I don't sing it to myself, exactly, but I do repeat it, metallic gyre, all the day long. In the at-home lab of an electrical engineer, I was surrounded by metallic gyres (not an industry term,) tiny spools of wire thread that do not unwind to fulfill their purpose. I touched things carefully, understanding none of them, vaguely susceptible like a green bruise because we had woken up in one another's legs. Do I make myself a blessing? (I really do. I am not perfect, but lovely, and a perceived dearth of this, of lovely people, is just a cultivated skew, benefiting whom? It's like, capitalism.) Anyway, unearthed Soviet tubes filled with brief forests of material mythos surrounded me, hofbrau, complex blessing. Engineer says: …(the) reactors all disappeared and who knows where they are. Each could kill 100,000 people. He makes coffee, I sit on the lawn. Oh, and at 1:47 we watched a rocket ascend. It did not go straight up, in case you are wondering. Part 2: Rocket Ascent at Vandenberg It appeared to experience a horizontal epoch, a teendom. Maybe meandering is part of all great inclinations. I'm reminded of "...the falcon cannot hear the falconer," but that's never really true, it's only a game. The rocket could definitely hear the falconer, and I feel sure that it still does, even at this very moment. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

The town knows about darkness, the slithered purple that comes on the land when rotation hides the sun. Something gathered, slow and heavy and electric, almost as though the town knows evil is coming, and its shape. From here we can't see spots on the sun. We know where the roads go and where, how the ground lies. The town has us because we know it, and it knows us. It sees through our lies, even the ones we tell ourselves. And in the dark, the town is ours and we are the town's. Being in the town is prosaic, sensuous, alcoholic; black galaxies shot with morphic red. We see ourselves drowning in the sweet evil falls and liking it. There is no life here but the death of days. Something is going to happen. Can't we feel it? --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

we're crying in a costco parking lot fiending for that intimacy we once felt because every so often we lose it and then i get depressed when i think you deserve much better sometimes i think i deserve better too most of the time it feels like i am already holding all the good that's out there large and fragile in my arms i hold on for dear life 
 the woman parked across from us is staring i wonder if she's ever felt like a failure 
 on my knees on the stairs that lead up to your father's bedroom we've unearthed that intimacy and it takes us away as usual so easily in the dark of the oakland warehouse the delight of the freedom to touch taste tie no time to worry about whether my roommates will hear us laughing when the cheap ikea bed gives up and we keep fucking on the debris sometimes i'm so ashamed at the pleasure of the way you fill me in these moments 
 on the stairs in my mouth in my hands i wonder if we could really feel things all that differently 
 the car seats are reclined as far as they can go we're here again face to face with each other trying hard not to look away because we're not ready to be face to face with the end honey let's take the sobbing upstairs and it becomes a perfectly choreographed waltz with your head gently falling onto my heavy chest while hands wrap hands when we make contact the weight is lifted and you fall asleep as quick as always i hate that i can't help but stare your at-peace tender face moving in perfect synchronicity with the rhythm of my unsteady breath as it ruffles your hair 
 i fall asleep with lips and tears in your hair i wonder if anything lasts for ever --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

the ammonite an index of sutures i got tired of cataloging them hermetically sealing little traumas afraid they'd get to know one another go boom little mother catastrophes instead i smashed little rocks to bits in a ditch each shard a memory released pressure from stomach the common burial ground the cavity of accumulation each little box coated in dust and feelings each glass stone chamber not really secret i get ready to shatter the discretions i open my palms no explosions no pain coalesce little traumas wrap your wounds around each other a chrysalis blood a becoming of feathers of air a fire --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

He had created a type of 3d paint, was one of the first things he told us. As we followed him upstairs to his plant filled apartment, we decided he was lying. It wasn't long until he told us about Mexico; kidnapped by cartels, held hostage for weeks, his father and grandfather were mercenaries in the French Foreign Legion. He introduced us to his three passport dog, four French girls and his pal from Belgium. Everyday there were new visitors, the Belgian was the last man in the house. When we woke up to find him tucking us in we realised he actually didn't sleep. Each night he tried to persuade a new girl into his bed; the Germans were more easily led, the French a severe non. He spoke French with an American accent, had the physique of a young Brad Pitt and described to us in detail how he used to build bombs. We were taught about an old style of torture while we sat in an empty fountain, among the graffiti we learned that if you swallow a button, and pull it back up, your body evacuates everything south, north, east and west. Six months later he called me in the middle of the night. I didn't pick up, but remembered the paintings he showed us before we left, the faces lighting up, leaping out. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

"when you see a mountain coming, get out of it's way." my uncle, six-two and oxen told me after clipping my wing. i learn at an early age to be a black man is to see a black man and fear his size, momentum. to love a black man is to see his shape and surrender. i lay myself down on his threshing floor say uncle, and await apocalypse across my arms. when two gods enter a room, one is humbled. but there are no walls, no floors in space. so i say lover when i meet him there. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

My mother calls them phases and maybe that's an accurate representation because they're lunar, edges of something, the kind of scrambling you do drunk in the dark. It's a lot of being drunk in the dark. I'm dying to discover myself and finally be cool. I'm smoking. I'm smoking hot. I'm a smoking gun. I went out one night and suffered through talking because I just wanted someone-anyone!- to fucking kiss me. The next day, I booty called Colin and took Jay home and kissed Emily and thought about kissing Jessica and I know I'm not falling in love with anyone but maybe just falling in love with touch? What is it when I dry hump the rug and watch porn and drink all the Elderflower Liquor in the cabinet? What is it when I let you make a home in the back of my throat? The thing is: I've got it all figured. Finally something to pass off as the truth. I'm just wrapped up in movement, in fingers wet hot small of my back smell like fir needles poking out of the snow. Touch me and touch you and it's a special thing. It's the only thing you fucking have. Do you hear me? --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

All soldiers believe Charms in their MREs are foul luck, bad juju, more than just a dark talisman, a virtual death sentence. Patrols have been called off if some dirtbag private straight out of basic tested fate by peeling open a pack of the generic Jolly Ranchers knockoffs that bring nothing but doom. Everyone on the FOB heard stories about how Charms were a malediction that summoned malefactors who felled soldiers with sniper fire, mortar blasts and IED ambushes. Marines supposedly even once threw Charms at the enemy in a firefight to even skewed, candy-altered odds. That's why you never ingest Charms. That's why you cast them away theatrically, make a real show of it. That's why you have to observe the whole superstition. We all choke down MREs. That's a universal experience. Some have Charms; some don't. It's all chance. It's purely random, who's charmed or cursed by fate. Likewise, it makes no sense who randomly gets killed, maimed, blown up, torn apart, out there, outside the wire. There's no rhyme or reason behind which soldiers go down, who gets battlefield crosses with helmets, rifles, boots and dog tags, who succumbs to PTSD, traumatic brain injury, moral injury, any war wound. Maybe some stale, rotten hard candy could make sense of it all. Maybe Charms are just imbued a significance they never earned in a senseless chaos devoid of any meaning, in an abysmal void that invites lore. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

my head is full of blood steamed like latte foam pressing open the seams in my skull, burning through folds in my brain like a shot luge. my head is the generating station in the delaware river, developed into luxury condos with beds that fill the whole homes. my head is a smoking suite with smoke stains in the corners of the ceilings and the ice cubes smell like the smoke stains and that is disappointing in an expected way. and i'm laying in my underwear in every single bed, rolling and sighing in the sheets and taking notes how do i feel here what did i do here how was the bounce maybe a man is there smelling sweaty or like flat champagne sticky about the nape and i like to feel wanted or at least i like to be paid what i told that feeling i wanted. or at the very least, i'm shoveling black sand into some deficit, punching out, and watching the direct deposit cartwheel in at 3am. i am trying to convince everyone that this is what i do, i lay in the beds and turn inputs to outputs and i go out with my friends when i feel like they miss me and i make wry jokes about my own self-worth and my lonesomeness and they laugh and i write about the things that they laugh about in language opaque enough that i don't even feel it anymore. and i am naked looking out a big window in a luxury condo where my spirit is hung on a bamboo hanger like a bathrobe. of course it is the 4am hour where nothing is provocative any more. i read a magazine article in some design rag about the fire hydrant pumping station across the river. without it, they'd never have built the station or turned the station into condos. the fire would have burned in the middle of the river and the lights would all ball-gag themselves. i feel very bad for the factory. does he like to gorge himself in big sucks and swallows from the river just so that people can tap it from hundreds of holes miles away? --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

Klu klux what? I'm a such A tool for America Hands scraped raw Hammered deep into cotton Fly up and it rains gold I'm a Midas But was forced to turn Inanimate objects into fortune To fields of green picked Over and rotten I'm a supposed Dead used problem Both birth and demise Alleged Between trying to kill And forgetting about I'ma question A poking to see if I writhe How much can a country Heap on a back until It concaves into a nail America's only seeming quandary You jealous? // Hey Klu Can I call you Klu What you going to do With that cross besides Make me laugh A tongue is a flame A black body is a cross You worship, me? Little ol' burnt thing Used to be pick to your ninny Now every time you lynch me You clone me // Behind you! Issa Me Oh! You thought the Noose would kill me No, no,no,no,no,no I mean not really me But another me Remember the clone The string up and teleport So every molecular thing Served up to slaughter Still lives structurally Same skin and everything But equipped with the Memory of your evil I do strange things with memory Like let it drip into a knife But don't worry I haven't breathed here enough To know how to use it // I don't get the sheet. I never got the sheet. I mean sure back then it was just as much about costuming fear as it was a mask, but now it's not even necessary. We have lived long enough to spot a racist. A white person could yawn and I could tell you if they whisper nigger under their breath in boardrooms or if they loudly proclaim their lust for my blood. It's all the same to me, all engineers of the type ecosystem that thirsts for black death so take off those gosh-darn sheets, join us, reveal how easily you slip into assembly, you'd be surprised. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

sonnet for Trans Lifeline & February 2017 & for Kai It snowed last week & the clouds slept lower. I wonder where your body went without you, who unraveled it & what came falling from their mouths. I think of you; a weighted sky; dirt, loosening itself in welcome; what it is to bury: to deem ready to give back; to kill: to call a body just a body, to turn to flesh & name the rest, the lost, the still of us fever dream prophecies of flightless birds about the heavens they can't reach. We know the sky was falling long before these days. It's just, it seems, the ground thaws out softer for us, now. Hungry or buckling or kind. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

I set down my flaming sword long enough to stare into a hunting trip photo at my Grandfather's memorial. It shows two men, and him between them in a dress and wig-hilarious joke (everyone laughed), "abomination" an Uncle scoffs casual-like now, tells story: "that's the ugliest woman I ever saw" man driving by says to man in passenger seat (everyone laughs). See: sadness and shame felt in my painted toenails hidden in socks, the tie too tight around my neck, clueless compliments about my long hair and hoops. Retell the story a different way: at 10, a buck strung for skinning from the eaves; the droppings he cut out and put in my palm. I can never breathe in church, but this morning I took communion for the first time in 9 years, for the old man-God knows why. Over his grave beside his stillborn first daughter's, I become the hospital where he died-Queen of the Valley (think meanest motherfucker: full crown of antlers on my head, long locks of weeping willow dyed with blood trailing in the wind, time turned back on itself, a naked Eve naming all the animals). Pulling my dress off the hanger, I bear witness: the empty center of the universe like a liver spot; wind in my hair, sun on my bare shoulders; and under the ground, hidden in the urn, his miserable ashes in drag. *Title quoted from the obituary for James E. Fidler published in the Napa Valley Register, 08/28/2017 (http://napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/james-e-fidler/article_65807aa0-9a66-5a83-a859-8be03d18c1c7.html). --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

Our hosts Logen Cure and I.S. Jones review their favs from our Fall 2017 issue! (Get caught up on Fall 2017 here: https://soundcloud.com/voicemailpoems/sets/voicemail-poems-fall-2017) This installment features poems by Kimiko Hirota, Austin Beaton, and Kai River Blevins. Music by TrueKey. (@truekey). >> The deadline to submit to our Winter Issue is December 1st: http://voicemailpoems.org/call >> Help us made more of these by supporting us on Patreon! http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems >> Review us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voicemail-poems-.org/id847081003

I have spent a thousand years picking myself out of the middle of nowhere on an empty highway clutching fistfuls of fireflies to my eyes clawing poppy blossoms across a belly full of rabbits I dripped with peppercorns I salted the earth as if that would make the mud easier to swallow I buried the creatures with a pocket watch and a dead fish and mounds rose up the hills of my body a congregation of sparrows sang like nightingales as if that would bring me peace my ghost is mad Ophelia babbling in swampflower poltergeisting the highways and waiting for the next thud wooden dolls slapped out of my hands brings me walnut shells to curl into like that could keep me safe from waking up again in the cheekbone curve of a boy who does not know the difference between a raven and a writing desk between I’m sorry and have some wild almonds love I picked these myself you’ll have to kiss me to taste them --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

The voice spills / Over the telephone / Time morphed into frequency / And back again / A compression of sentiment / Unraveled by longing / It says: ‘hiiiii’ A conversation about nothing is spoken / The day’s errands / The planned social respite / A desire to lay roots too soon to build / Hidden within a sense of fear of the future / What lays beneath Beneath the telephone / Lies a manipulation so essential / Its how music to MRIs function / Called the Fourier transform / And as removed as you think math can be from philosophy / Well transform it into another domain / They are the same thing / What I mean to say / Is Fourier found a way to describe how something instantaneous / Is infinite / A pulse in time / Corresponding to a sinc function in frequency that stretches to infinity / Decaying, it’s limit approaching zero, reverberations felt less and less as you leave the instant behind but ever so present / Laid on top of each other like rain drops / Like a voice / Dancing in time But to get that voice back to me / The telephone truncates / Otherwise it would alias / His words would morph into something indistinguishable / Like he isn’t him / Like he’s the CIA agent he always jokes he could become / What I mean to say is in order to bring words back to me / Engineering dictates that the sinc function must cut off at a certain point / Not let it stretch to infinity / Practicality telling philosophy to stop overthinking or I’ll lose my mind / Or the signals can’t get reconstructed / He says he has to go / I know our conversation about nothing can’t last very long / If I want to preserve the instant --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

(after Jacqui Germain) Tells me that I’ve spent enough time antagonizing him, corrupting his divine name, condemning the thinly veiled violence in his bones. He demands that I forgive his unrelenting presence, forbids me from saying all that I’ve learned about him – like Man is the aftertaste of disgusted stares. or Man comes alive when hardened fist meets pliant ribcage, his laughter exposed by the sudden crack. or Man says my mouth is a broken levee, my voice an unwelcome flood (softly) wearing down the fang of him. or I know there is something powerful about queer blood. Why else would Man be drawn like a rabid beast to the iron of me? or Man begs silently for the warmth of desire, for open arms, for hands that no longer grasp at his throat. or Man is a leech, a broken mirror, a wounded animal – small and fragile and desperate and defeated. or Man has turned my family against me. Man has turned my family against me. Man has turned my family against me. or Man has turned my family against themselves. or I was born into the hands of a doctor who sucked Woman from my throat, filled my gasping lungs with the drought of Man. or I was born into the hands of a doctor who worshipped Man. What chance did I have? --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

In the morning, I stood up, sticky and sweaty. I walked to the fridge with weight. I felt a stillness. This house has been quiet since you left. When you were gone I slept on your side of the bed and didn’t wake up once during the night. There could only be two reasons— 1) Because your side is better than mine or 2) Because I sleep better when you are gone. When you were gone I cleaned the house and sat in silence. I read on the balcony while I grilled chicken wings in a marinade I had invented (You would have loved them). I slept naked. I didn’t flush the toilet every time. I danced. I had friends over for cherries and pistachios. I moved your chair to the other side of the room. I watched the fireworks. I smoked your weed. I listened to music. I stretched. I sang. I stayed up late. I fell asleep on the couch. I touched myself. I took a long shower. I fell asleep on the couch. I washed the dishes. I scrubbed the grill. I ate ice cream. I ate ice cream. I ate ice cream. I missed you most in the afternoon when the daylight no longer knew which color it wanted to be. I watched a video of us singing in the park. I smiled out loud. I thought about what it would be like to dance for you—If you’d ever get over yourself. I thought about what it would be like to flirt with you like you were a stranger—If I could ever get over myself. I looked at my nails a lot. I wrote. I talked to angels. I listened. I mapped out five different garage sales happening around our home and planned to go to each one. I didn’t. I tricked time. I crushed hunger. I did not cry. I did not drink. I did not lock the sliding door. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

You said my name for the last time The night before you died Exhausted and terrified You lifted the oxygen mask from your mouth And said, hi jenn That was all you could muster So much hung in the air left unsaid. Hi jenn, I’m sorry. Hi jenn, it wasn’t your fault. Hi jenn, I shouldn’t have kicked you out. Hi jenn, you are a disappointment. Hi jenn, you did everything I wanted to do. Hi jenn, I’m jealous and scared and tired. Hi jenn, It’s almost over and I fucked up. Hi jenn, help me. Hi jenn, save me. Hi jenn, I’ll never give you the satisfaction of my goodbye. Hi jenn, pick up the pieces. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

When I came into this world they said Welcome to the holy land The world is in your palm Just as you fit into your mother's Gave me a name which slid off tongues In a way too harsh for the American voice and Too soft for the Dominican palate I grew up longing for the day where My name never sounded like an apology Uncommonly Christian When I introduced myself to my theology course last year My professor gave me a look and said "Ah, that must be why you're here" My given name can translate to "sacrifice" and Coming out as trans has definitely felt that way as I Give away favorite clothes because dysphoria no longer allows them as I Endure the bite of a hypodermic needle every other week as I Still push down the discomfort of being a "daughter", "sister", "aunt" when I am just a person and I can feel the knife being twisted While my veins run cold The world stops as I Smile while they hug me and  Greet the ghost of who I used to be  They unmask me to my friends They sacrifice me and Making a home out of this flesh prison means Sacrificing my home and Your love and The comfort in between our silences It means Saying goodbye to you, to me, To us and our simplicities But I have long been ready to sweep this ash and Rise from the dead Hello, My name is Max and The only thing I'm sacrificing today is Fear --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

This time with Natives, not my old bougie choice Of American Spirits. I took up nail polish In Millennial Pink. I started mixing Sangria With Coca-Cola. I went to work and dipped in and out of lives, Looked at grandchildren peering out from wallets; I touched the shoulder of a man who drinks Elevated IPAs like he might die tomorrow. He might die tomorrow. He waits for the bus and stumbles outside. I was supposed to help him remember, But I got hypnotized by Chelsea Wolfe, that haunting: “How many years have I been sleeping?” But who listens to lyrics anymore? I give him a bag of Lay’s. I pat him On the shoulder. Softly, softly Driving home from the bar with Depeche Mode on, I can finally Hear my own tires taking me Home. Not anywhere I want to be. Not up in the mountains, where high Prairie flowers break your heart One by one. Too delicate. Was everything on Earth built to fail? A couple show me a video of a baby Learning to talk. We laugh. As I turn To wash the glasses, the detergent Slides up my arms. It burns. “I’ll Cry later,” I think, “Yes, that’s when.” --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

And it’s not only the dollar aisle or because you gave birth control to a couple ex-girlfriends or how you fed me Lexapro, a pill Kanye West rapped about in a studio probably not far from a Rite Aid in Los Angeles. Not just that five bucks buys me and a millionaire the same serotonin droplets spreading under the part of the scalp soft on a baby, a chemical that tells me I’m me returning like a rabbit angel with a cartoon halo floating back into near-corpse Bugs Bunny so he can keep eating carrots and talk like he’s from New York, & I can enjoy the smell of gasoline, the beauty of an extra paper clip given by a colleague or finding beach rocks and agates shaped like Nebraska. It’s not only the reliability of my favorite cashier, a ketchup red vest like the fun aunt at Christmas or the palm tree parking lot, the oranges glowing out the black branches, magneting the light from your Pluto blue sign like something that’d happen between a moon and a star. It isn’t primarily the ice cream I never eat but glad is there for others like Christianity and Botox, or the bananas I don’t buy because I’m not sure I always want to be good to myself but would give it all away for a little familiarity. I could move to a new state, lose my mind or lover then visit any of the 4600 drug stores and the heels spin on the driveway back home from the mailbox, an anybody American boogie-ing down aisle 6 under bars of fluorescent, the industrial hum and same anxiety a pharmacy can soften. Rite Aid, I love you and a stranger also with your store membership is asking, what am I shopping for today? Who misses me? How much does it matter when I don’t trust myself? --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

The pink skies and dry air The blue tongues and dark secrets soften like chalk pastels on our fingerprints Remember picking up pinecones discovering the city by bike surprised by anything we could dig and bury Nine p.m. is fading The steepest sand hill is still sinking and your hair isn’t short anymore My teeth are straight and my tires are flat and your dog has been dead for years So we move on thinking we’re clever swimming against the tide toward our new fears We drive down one-ways in opposite directions remembering our swingset when country Taylor Swift plays We used to want each other’s happy stories the way adults like sob stories to donate to and feel better about themselves We used to hold up the moon with our feet, peace signs high popcorn stuck in our gums Photographs veiled with dust at the back of our drawers I’m beginning to sleep before midnight with the playroom black The door closed The dolls lay close but not touching --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

I have spent most of my life as a writer, spinning universes and microscope lenses, cosmic horrors, and hope. Intellectual treatise, statistical research, and internet rant. but despite this, and despite months of trying, I am shit at writing love poems. And you, you deserve love poems but convention and tradition offer me no council I mean, I could promise pull down the moon for you, and I’m sure you’d be impressed by my scientific prowess as I tear chapters from your favorite science fiction to build the world’s first tractor beam... But the minute I turn that thing on, oceans will pull back from distant shores and rush towards our coastal town killing hundreds of our friends and thousands of innocent fish somewhere in the vicinity of Tahiti, and I just don’t think expressing love with the mass murder of people ...and fish makes a whole lot of sense. You can call me unromantic, but no matter how fond of you I am, I just don’t think any one person is worth an extinction level event. I could tell you that your soulful, eyes shine like the sun, that you are like staring at the sun, But, one of the myriad reasons I love you is that unlike some other loves, in some other poems, you are not out to blind me. ...and unlike the sun, you don't give me skin cancer. I am suspicious that celestial metaphors secretly suck. Maybe I’m being too literal, but I feel like comparing our love to silent, deadly titans, suspended in cold unknowable expanse, is like saying we will always be so distant, we will only really see each other in the reflections of our past.   I want better for us, words that don’t imply emotions have rendered us scientifically illiterate sociopaths. After hours and months, the best I’ve been able to come up with is this: I'll be right back, with coffee. No, seriously, I think these might be The Most Romantic Words. …Hear me out. When I say, I’ll be right back with coffee I mean I will face blindness, from the actual sun, at whiskey hangover o’clock, so you can sleep a little longer. I mean I want your mind to function at full capacity because while, yes, you are inarguably beautiful, I’m very much like a zombie in that I am really into you for your brains. It means, I want to give you comfort and as proper Seattleites our comfort curls steaming from mugs clutched between fingers and tongues tempered to know a little bitterness enhances warmth. When I say, “I’ll be right back with coffee”, I mean you’ve known me to leave, And I have known you to leave, and we’ve seen each other run both away from and toward dangerous things ...like each other and while we may put cold unknowable distance between us, if I can provide warmth, or comfort, or a few minutes of peace rest assured, even if I have to go for a while, I’ll be right back, with coffee. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

Our hosts Logen Cure and I.S. Jones review their favs from our Summer 2017 issue! (Get caught up on Summer 2017 here: soundcloud.com/voicemailpoems/sets/voicemail-poems-summer-2017) This installment features poems by Mercedes Lucero, Daniel Barnum, and Bee Ulrich. Music by TrueKey. (@truekey). >> The deadline to submit to our Fall Issue is September 1st: http://voicemailpoems.org/call >> Help us made more of these by supporting us on Patreon! http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems >> Review us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voicemailpoems/id847081003

This week’s poems: >> “The Scenic Rout” by Nicole Jean Turner >> “thank you for supporting your local counseling and psychological services” by Chelsea Sieg >> “In Which Rachel Changes the Oil” by Em Taylor >> “Afterwards” by EJ Schoenborn >> “We Named the Dog Indiana” by Skyler Reed Hosted by Logen Cure! Thank you to our Patreon supporters! Please contribute to our project: >> http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems Subscribe via iTunes: >> https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voicemailpoems/id847081003

This week’s poems: >> “the burning of knight von hohenberg with his servant before the walls of Zürich, for sodomy, 1482″ by Bee Ulrich >> “In a Dark Room, the Universe Was Calling Me” by Melissa Cerrillo >> “For My Grandmother, Who Kept His Last Name" by Chrissy Martin >> “Part Waters (Two of Cups)" by Daniel Barnum >> “Tankman" by Kyle Liang Hosted by Logen Cure! Thank you to our Patreon supporters! Please contribute to our project: >> http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems Subscribe via iTunes: >> https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voicemailpoems/id847081003

This week’s poems: >> “New Orleans Poem” by Zoë Blair-Schlagenhauf >> "Frozen" by Elliott Ocean >> “Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful” by Mercedes Lucero >> “The summer of mourning” by TaneshaNicole >> “post talk” by alexis briscuso Hosted by Logen Cure! Thank you to our Patreon supporters! Please contribute to our project: >> http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems Subscribe via iTunes: >> https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voicemailpoems/id847081003