VOICEMAIL POEMS

VOICEMAIL POEMS episodes:

• 09.17.2018

  "Moon" by Zach Goldberg

  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...

  
• 09.17.2018

  "Whero" by Stacey Teague

  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...

  
• 09.17.2018

  "Manic Pixie POV" by Taylor Jaczin

  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...

  
• 09.17.2018

  "Never Trust A Snowglobe" by Caroljean Gavin

  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...

  
• 09.17.2018

  "Reading Lines" by Mariah Bosch

  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...

  
• 09.17.2018

  "On Sundays" by Sara Hutchinson

  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...

  
• 09.17.2018

  "200 Words About Airports" by Emryse Geye

  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;...

  
• 09.17.2018

  "Invitation" by Tria Wood

  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...

  
• 04.16.2018

  “An Embarrassment of Dandelions” by Andy Powell

  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...

  
• 04.16.2018

  “The sticks.” by James Barrett Rodehaver

  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...

  
• 04.16.2018

  "BEAVERS" by John Quinonez

  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...

  
• 04.16.2018

  “Different ways to say the word ‘thug’” by Dagmawe Berhanu

  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...

  
• 04.16.2018

  “I Sang It in a Love Song, So It Must Be True” by Alison Kronstadt

  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 ...

  
• 04.16.2018

  "The Dark Spots" by Kelly Jones

  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...

  
• 04.16.2018

  “Replication of a Miracle” by Katherine Indermaur

  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...

  
• 04.16.2018

  “Some Synonym of Practice I Am” by Olatunde Osinaike

  I finally want to talk about it has taken me a decade more than most and all my wisdom ...

  
• 04.16.2018

  “at the end of the devil’s breath” by Romaine Washington

  …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...

  
• 04.16.2018

  “SOUTHWEST AIRLINES FLIGHT #2003” by Cortney Lamar Charleston

  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...

  
• 04.16.2018

  "TINY NOWHERE" by jessie knoles

  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...

  
• 04.16.2018

  "How To Push" by Laura E. Davis

  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...

  
• 04.10.2018

  *Winter 2018* - A Taunt, a Condo, and a Lifeline

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "Blackberry Winter" by Robyn Campbell

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "Rayleigh Scattering" by E.G. Cunningham

  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....

  
• 02.05.2018

  "Alternate" by Mariel Fechik

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "Rocket" by Allison Hummel

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "The Rising" by Cathleen Allyn Conway

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "we're on a roller coaster, i'm nauseous but i don't wanna get off" by aleida m

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "ammonite sonnet" by Melissa Eleftherion

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "Marseille" by Emily S Cooper

  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,...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "say uncle" by Wimpy AF

  "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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "HI, I'M OVULATING" by Elysia Lucinda Smith

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "Charms" by Joseph S. Pete

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "whelp" (after aziza barnes) by zach blackwood

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "Taunts to the Klan" by Kirwyn Sutherland

  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...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "Sonnet for Trans Lifeline & February 2017" by Sam Rush

  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;...

  
• 02.05.2018

  "A SHINING EXAMPLE OF HOW AN HONEST, KIND, STRONG, AND RESPONSIBLE MAN LIVES HIS LIFE" by Dana Whtvr

  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...

  
• 11.13.2017

  *FALL 2017* Poems by Kimiko Hirota, Austin Beaton, & Kai River Blevins

  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...

  
• 10.10.2017

  "Almond Blossom" by Ellen Webre

  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...

  
• 10.10.2017

  "Fourier" by Lihi Z

  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 /...

  
• 10.10.2017

  "Man Gets Tired of Being in the Spotlight" by Kai River Blevins

  (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 ...

  
• 10.10.2017

  "When You Were Gone" by Julia Pileggi

  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...

  
• 10.10.2017

  "Hi Jenn" by Jenn Henry

  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...

  
• 10.10.2017

  "The Sacrifice" by Max Ureña

  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...

  
• 10.10.2017

  "You Guys, I Took Up Smoking Again" by Becca Yenser

  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...

  
• 10.10.2017

  "I Love You, Rite Aid!" by Austin Beaton

  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...

  
• 10.10.2017

  "A Poem for My Old Best Friend" by Kimiko Hirota

  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...

  
• 10.10.2017

  "Right Back With Coffee" by Shanna Alden

  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...

  
• 08.06.2017

  [Episode 05] - Summer 2017: Mercedes Lucero, Daniel Barnum, and Bee Ulrich

  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...

  
• 07.31.2017

  Poetry by Nicole Jean Turner, Chelsea Sieg, Em Taylor, EJ Schoenborn, & Skyler Reed

  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...

  
• 07.23.2017

  Poetry by Bee Ulrich, Melissa Cerrillo, Chrissy Martin, Daniel Barnum, & Kyle Liang

  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...