VOICEMAIL POEMS

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

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Stacey Teague called us from Clonakilty, Ireland.

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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.

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Taylor Jaczin called us from St. Petersburg, FL.

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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.

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Caroljean Gavin called us from Winston-Salem, NC.

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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.

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Mariah Bosch called us from Fresno, CA.

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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.

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Sara Hutchinson called us from Santa Cruz, CA.

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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.

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Emryse Geye called us from Portland, OR.

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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.

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Tria Wood called us from Houston, TX.

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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.

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Andy Powell called us from New York, NY.

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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.

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James Barrett Rodehaver called us from Dallas, TX.

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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.

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John Quinonez called us from Boston, MA.

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