Voicemail Poems

…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 p

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/voicemailpoe

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

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://

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 e

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 s

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

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 ever

"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 thin

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 rhym

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

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 Mem

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 t