Voicemail Poems

To hate yourself and have sex makes you a movie director on a street corner, seeing everything in slow motion, scouting for bodies. When it’s too dark to see we clock out to edit more. After work, every night becomes dance. Re-cuts of thighs and light shows. A supercut is a cheap haircut, not filmmaking technique. But I know montage because I put movement over belonging, dwell only in breath, each a one-time use. Montages aren’t romantic. They are light shot through crashing tunnel, excess draped in scarcity. No, there aren’t many rhythms to curl up inside. But why luxuriate in memory? Rewind us. I am radiation. I’m giving off so much light. I can’t stop working. I can’t sleep. I’m out in nightclubs, searching. Burning for it. Someone that knows how not to hate me. Someone that can teach me how. ————————————– Ankoor Patel called us from San Francisco, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems twitter.com/voicemailpoems instagram.com/voicemailpoems

The cut on my ankle bleeds into the shape of an exclamation point You speak and it comes out ornate swirling, as if from an an ancient book I’m trying to follow those letters which are, inevitably, words, through the tall yellow grasses at the edge of the lagoon where your charm bracelet lays splayed in the sand and my nose disappears into the blue Let me tell you about swimming: The bleeding stops The world ends long enough for you to miss it The cold snaps, like a spell from the end of a wand melting fear into a body the weightlessness unhowling me In the water your words circle me floating in amongst the moon jellies On my back I watch my breasts like two pale ducks bob in the gentle waves I watch them fly away Your words bend into the exclamation point Make a portal of me A sentence of me A loudness of me I paddle back to shore a pearl growing under my tongue I settle into the meat between land and sea and decide to stay there ————————————– Asha Berkes called us from Tacoma, WA

How their branches seem to extend without burden in the lengthening light, their star-shaped leaves of deepest burgundy, weightless, more form than texture, surrendering to autumn air in such a way that it’s difficult to discern where leaf-tip ends and shade begins; until, wind- jostled, they flutter like wisps of cordovan dust out into a blue expanse of emptiness – traversing the chasm between having been and soon becoming – showing us a way forward, letting go without regret or anguish, and knowing this world will be made whole again from those very things that have been taken or freely given. ————————————– John Muro called us from Guilford, CT. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems twitter.com/voicemailpoems instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I hope all my books are banned books, like, so contraband they start trappin’ them out the bando— people fiendin’ for my words with such fervor clawing at the door for just one more taste someone keeps the lookout to make sure twelve don’t see the weight: tiny baggies filled with poem scraps pushed out from every corner I hope my books become so obscure that someone’s biggest flex is telling you they’ve read me and then you search for my Wikipedia page and all it says is -Black -queer -longtime resident of the south -93 ‘til infinity I hope white people hate my shit try to say it means nothing in the daylight feel so raw and dirty sneaking peaks on the dark web face a hot mess of flush; I hope they slam their laptops shut when they hear footsteps approaching hang their heads with shame and spend the rest of their lives wondering how much they missed out on I hope they outlaw my books And then drag queens read them to toddlers on the front steps of the capital I hope there are no fron

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 bri

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://voi

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 clos

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://voicemailpoem

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

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 the

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 - s

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

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 caden

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