VOICEMAIL POEMS

ài yɑ, I gasped

in a foreign language

he laughed, taking off my socks

toes without nail polish, he kissed

the sweat beads on my back

without a photographer

a woman in white dress

a man in linen suit

held the turquoise river

and their breath

fit bodies running shirtless

under the sun poured molten gold

made me stare, ài yɑ

he left before we wrinkle

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Elena Wu called us from Chicago, IL.

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Warning: do not think this bed

will bear your weight across the bay.

What holds you at night

may not carry you in the morning.

The air might already be leaking. It may

not be what it seems. Run your hands

along the seams. Check every fold for hidden

faults. Feel for well-meaning pokes and jabs.

Caution: be wary most of holes.

puncture holes/nail holes/eyeholes/keyholes/pinholes/drainage holes/armholes/loopholes/pie

holes/watering holes/hellholes/wormholes/rabbit holes

Help with finding the holes:

place your ears to the surface.

Listen for sounds of escaping.

The culprit may be close to quiet,

whispering in the farthest corners.

Be cautious about what you hear.

It may not be the truth. None of this

will be worth the tides of sleepless

nights, bailing out the water

rushing over your dreams.

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Kathleen Granados called us from New York, NY.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - A swan has fallen in love with a plastic swan-shaped paddleboat on a pond in the German town of Muenster and has spent the past three weeks flirting with the vessel five times its size, a sailing instructor said Friday.

He's not half nuts, this German swan, to love

Something so near the actual, you might squint

from shore, squishing sand beneath your toes,

to see its broad white belly part the shining

green, neck angled always toward the clouds

deflecting every antic of its frenzied,

mini-suitor. This happens, right? Who among

us with a single red corpuscle hasn't dug in

and waited the whole doomed thing to its conclusion,

wanting some chill beauty to paddle its slow turn

toward us on the man-made lake? In your case,

not a Muenster tourist boat, let's hope, but more like

the narcissist with lovely eyes and a voice

to unzip things to, or the one that cut the right

profile but sank like a Petoskey stone. But still,

in spite of tearstains, sucker punches, fists to the glass

jaw, the dumb heart beats, and tries again. See,

there he goes, beak agog and hissing at the rival

birds, wings spread to seem more menacing, black

webbed feet paddling frantic through the algae.

Then night sets and a silver moon beams down

on bird and boat, afloat alone, and in the pale

light looking for all the world like the shape of love.

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Christina Kallery called us from Ann Arbor, MI.

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Con·tain·er

/kənˈtānər/. (noun).

1. An object.

2. An object that can be used to hold.

3. An object that can be used to transport something.

Synonyms: Vessel.

Do you feel like a vessel?

Ves·sel

/ˈves(ə)l/. (noun).

1. Ship.

2. Hollow container.

3. Cask, Barrel, Ship.

I think of myself as a container.

in august i started eating myself

into myself.

this isn’t a metaphor.

i was actually hungry.

a barrel of hunger.

i didn’t even know it could rain like this.

i collected rain in the barrel of my

Stom·ach. /ˈstəmək/. (noun).

1. An internal organ.

2. An appetite.

Stom·ach. /ˈstəmək/. (verb).

1. Consume.

Did you ever think of yourself as a daughter? A son?

Con. /kon/. (noun).

A Vietnamese noun meaning:

1. Daughter.

2. Son.

3. Child.

Wasn’t I a vessel, then?

Con. /kon/. (classifier).

A Vietnamese classifier meaning:

1. Specifying the act of being an animal.

2. I am of animal.

3. To classify animacy.

Wasn’t I a container?

i wanted to be a container.

until i became a container.

to beg a small god to turn

me into a prayer.

i watched myself become a container.

over and over. over and over.

wasn’t i a good daughter/son/child/

Con. /kon/. (noun).?

A Vietnamese noun meaning:

1. Daughter.

2. Son.

3. Child.

4. Animal.

I watched my mother become a

Con·tain·er /kənˈtānər/. (noun).

1. An object holding grief.

2. An object holding grief.

3. An object holding grief.

An object holding daughterhood.

my mom was a daughter. the way

i was a daughter.

to contain a prayer.

to consume—

a barrel. vessel. con. animal. daughter.

over and over. over and over.

wasn’t i a good [daughter/son/child/]?

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Blue Đào Nguyễn called us from Saigon, Vietnam.

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Joy can survive climate change.

Radioactive baby crawling on all fours.

So full of movement and color.

Half the animals are gone, but baby

finds other creatures to play with.

Their gills are on the outside, their eyes

haunting and heterochromatic.

Their skin glows, too. Sharp, variegated

ecstasy. Exuberantly fat lines

aglow with graffiti ethos. Taking

the world as it comes, not as it

ought to be. Radiant Baby, sainthood

may be possible, and if it is, bless this

unholy poet who looks around the

disappearing world and finds only

despair and not beauty in the orange-

yellow-red pollution moon. You do not

even cry, baby, just burble in comic sans.

You just climb towards nuclear

proliferation chanting dada, dada.

You grant us serenity on the subway.

You model for us commercialized

innocence. We buy you, our joy.

We buy you, our hope. We smile

at your innocent determination.

A cave painting for the end times,

depicting a Neanderthal dreamscape —

a pictograph that will survive the

inevitable collapse—but beautifully,

a chunky butterfly kick away from annihilation,

a stroke towards JOY!

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Sean Hanrahan called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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I’ve always wished God could grow me down

into an egg in the snow. White on white. Piles of drift.

Back in Cincinnati my tongue grew red in the midday cold,

waiting for someone to suck it like cherry popsicle.

Those were the days I danced like Jesus was coming.

I took off my clothes and I felt very good about it, like

it was the only thing in the world. Once I petted a farm

chicken so softly she believed she had a greater purpose

than egg production. We sit cross-legged in her coop, whistling

this world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through

as reminder, as prayer. We pass through the world’s largest rubber

band ball. We pass through Penn State. We steal away

to California and sit on the hood of my car at Pebble Beach,

watch a group toss breadcrumbs at seagulls under a sign

reading NO FEEDING. They’ll approach us, ask if I saved her

from the butcher board or if her quivering eyeballs remind me

of my own. I’ll tell them she wanted to find herself outside

of her children, that the only quiver in my eyeballs is from

the wind. People don’t realize there doesn’t always have to be

some kind of tragic backstory. We could just be happy

together. It could just be that.

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Carolene Sarah Kurien called us from Fort Lauderdale, FL.

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"paul wall drives me home after our sade concert date"

& names me his favorite dime. rubs his hands on my

jukebox thighs & bobs his head to dj screw along the lake.

i lean into the purple of midnight & take his palm to my cheek.

suck in the freezing drip of platinum rings. we sail the shore

south in a topless whip, my lollipop mouth matching its lacquer.

he, my bourbon smooth guide, diamond dipped & dazzling,

sips on the slow syrup of evening. grips the wheel & flashes

a mouthful of mansion. serenades me with sweetest taboo

& turns the car into a quiet southern storm. my hurricane on 44s,

eyeing my heart & sweetening my tea. love is a 2004 vixen

fantasy and he is my lone star. we glide on chrome, chasing

the glisten of cosmos, riding along the asphalt’s bass.

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Musu Bangaru called us from Chicago, IL.

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Between months of silence,

my father sends me communist TikToks

from Chinese accounts. I assume they are pro

but can’t know—I don’t have the app.

What is between us remains

unwatchable. But I want to look

at him across our dimming

country, water and wheat becoming

one expanse of night. If I could drive to him,

I would begin the wrong way.

When he sends me a video of Anne Hathaway

giving a speech about her father,

all I can see is her face, unmoving,

and I’m left to imagine what she might say

the way my father in the dark is holding closely

his phone and trying to remember my voice.

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Andrew Chi Keong Yim called us from Queens, New York.

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Mom is sitting cross-legged on the hard kitchen floor,

slicing cabbage and green onions for kimchi,

covering her mouth as she laughs.

She’s watching 7-year-old me in the living room,

lip-syncing to Madonna and Whitney Houston,

holding my Walkman like a microphone,

grabbing my shiny Michael Jackson glove suspenders,

pretending I am the next winner on Star Search.

My brother, who is two years older, is

practicing taekwondo with G.I. Joe action figures.

A few feet away on the couch, dad’s holding

a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other,

watching a scary VHS tape he rented for the weekend.

Mom is still angry at him for showing us The Exorcist,

but that’s how we spend quality time together.

To be together.

The year before the 1988 Seoul Olympics,

we leave with mom for America.

There will be no more walking off base to open street markets

where vendors sell made-to-order spicy rice cakes, or

giving my allowance to that elderly Korean lady who sells

packs of Juicy Fruit gum from a broken hand basket.

I will never again squat on a dirty public bathroom floor,

or be taunted by Korean school girls for being a “mutt.”

My brother and I will miss the walk to school,

past the movie theater where we saw Return of the Living Dead,

with other kids whose future is also unknown.

No more origami classes or writing our names in Korean.

Dad will stay where duty calls, while we move

to a city in Virginia nicknamed Bad News.

Heaven is no longer a place on earth.

We are no longer together.

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Trish Broome called us from Sykesville, MD.

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They say I appear in different places, to different people, at the same time.

Saints bilocate too.

If I had wings, my flapping would make every verb a we.

Pain has splintered me. I am detached, restless, scattered to the wind of people’s wants.

I am the necessary monster, the needed threat, the whispered warning.

I am forever in your mouth.

I do penance.

Nothing is ever anyone’s but a woman’s fault.

Have you never wept? Throat empty tired, so much squelching over the past?

Lucky you, if you’ve never walked against a current until you turn the river red.

But I know, even if we do it in hot,

locked cars, us cryers are many-numbered, numinous.

Underneath the waters, underneath our skeletons,

there is ancient hunger, a shared and staggering scream.

What if instead of inconstancy,

a man let us throw these hands that mother and matter and mutter

around a sturdy neck?

What if we had floated downstream together,

nothing good getting away?

We could have kissed our children

like they didn’t know

what kisses were. We could have sung.

Love has made me small.

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Cristina Paul called us from Los Angeles, CA.

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