VOICEMAIL POEMS

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 jenn, it wasn’t your fault.

Hi jenn, I shouldn’t have kicked you out.

Hi jenn, you are a disappointment.

Hi jenn, you did everything I wanted to do.

Hi jenn, I’m jealous and scared and tired.

Hi jenn, It’s almost over and I fucked up.

Hi jenn, help me.

Hi jenn, save me.

Hi jenn, I’ll never give you the satisfaction of my goodbye.

Hi jenn, pick up the pieces.

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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 for the Dominican palate

I grew up longing for the day where

My name never sounded like an apology

Uncommonly Christian

When I introduced myself to my theology course last year

My professor gave me a look and said

"Ah, that must be why you're here"

My given name can translate to "sacrifice" and

Coming out as trans has definitely felt that way as I

Give away favorite clothes because dysphoria no longer allows them as I

Endure the bite of a hypodermic needle every other week as I

Still push down the discomfort of being a "daughter", "sister", "aunt" when I am just a person and

I can feel the knife being twisted

While my veins run cold

The world stops as I

Smile while they hug me and 

Greet the ghost of who I used to be 

They unmask me to my friends

They sacrifice me and

Making a home out of this flesh prison means

Sacrificing my home and

Your love and

The comfort in between our silences

It means

Saying goodbye to you, to me,

To us and our simplicities

But I have long been ready to sweep this ash and

Rise from the dead

Hello,

My name is Max and

The only thing I'm sacrificing today is

Fear

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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 the shoulder of a man who drinks

Elevated IPAs like he might die tomorrow.

He might die tomorrow.

He waits for the bus and stumbles outside.

I was supposed to help him remember,

But I got hypnotized by

Chelsea Wolfe, that haunting:

“How many years have I been sleeping?”

But who listens to lyrics anymore?

I give him a bag of Lay’s. I pat him

On the shoulder. Softly, softly

Driving home from the bar with

Depeche Mode on, I can finally

Hear my own tires taking me

Home. Not anywhere I want to be.

Not up in the mountains, where high

Prairie flowers break your heart

One by one. Too delicate.

Was everything on Earth built to fail?

A couple show me a video of a baby

Learning to talk. We laugh. As I turn

To wash the glasses, the detergent

Slides up my arms. It burns. “I’ll

Cry later,” I think, “Yes, that’s when.”

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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 bucks

buys me and a millionaire

the same serotonin droplets

spreading under the part of the scalp

soft on a baby,

a chemical that tells me I’m me

returning like a rabbit angel

with a cartoon halo

floating back into

near-corpse Bugs Bunny

so he can keep eating carrots

and talk like he’s from New York,

& I can enjoy the smell of gasoline,

the beauty of an extra paper clip

given by a colleague

or finding beach rocks and agates

shaped like Nebraska.

It’s not only the reliability

of my favorite cashier,

a ketchup red vest

like the fun aunt at Christmas

or the palm tree parking lot,

the oranges glowing

out the black branches,

magneting the light

from your Pluto blue sign

like something that’d happen

between a moon and a star.

It isn’t primarily the ice cream

I never eat but glad is there for others

like Christianity and Botox,

or the bananas I don’t buy

because I’m not sure I always

want to be good to myself

but would give it all away

for a little familiarity.

I could move to a new state,

lose my mind or lover

then visit any of the 4600

drug stores

and the heels spin

on the driveway back home

from the mailbox,

an anybody American

boogie-ing down aisle 6

under bars of fluorescent,

the industrial hum

and same anxiety

a pharmacy can soften.

Rite Aid, I love you

and a stranger also

with your store membership

is asking, what am I shopping for today?

Who misses me?

How much does it matter

when I don’t trust myself?

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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 short anymore

My teeth are straight

and my tires are flat

and your dog has been dead for years

So we move on

thinking we’re clever

swimming against the tide

toward our new fears

We drive down one-ways

in opposite directions

remembering our swingset

when country Taylor Swift plays

We used to want each other’s

happy stories

the way adults like sob stories

to donate to and feel better

about themselves

We used to hold up the moon

with our feet, peace signs high

popcorn stuck in our gums

Photographs veiled with dust

at the back of our drawers

I’m beginning to sleep

before midnight

with the playroom black

The door closed

The dolls lay close

but not touching

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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 love poems

but convention and tradition offer me no council

I mean,

I could promise pull down the moon for you,

and I’m sure you’d be impressed by my scientific prowess

as I tear chapters from your favorite science fiction

to build the world’s first tractor beam...

But the minute I turn that thing on,

oceans will pull back from distant shores

and rush towards our coastal town

killing hundreds of our friends

and thousands of innocent fish somewhere in the vicinity of Tahiti,

and I just don’t think expressing love with the mass murder of people

...and fish

makes a whole lot of sense.

You can call me unromantic,

but no matter how fond of you I am,

I just don’t think any one person is worth an extinction level event.

I could tell you that your soulful, eyes shine like the sun,

that you are like staring at the sun,

But, one of the myriad reasons I love you

is that unlike some other loves,

in some other poems,

you are not out to blind me.

...and unlike the sun,

you don't give me skin cancer.

I am suspicious that

celestial metaphors secretly suck.

Maybe I’m being too literal,

but I feel like comparing our love to silent,

deadly titans, suspended in cold unknowable expanse, is like saying

we will always be so distant, we will only really see each other

in the reflections of our past.  

I want better for us,

words that don’t imply

emotions have rendered us scientifically illiterate sociopaths.

After hours and months, the best I’ve been able to come up with is this:

I'll be right back, with coffee.

No, seriously,

I think these might be

The Most Romantic Words.

…Hear me out.

When I say, I’ll be right back with coffee

I mean I will face blindness,

from the actual sun,

at whiskey hangover o’clock,

so you can sleep a little longer.

I mean I want your mind to function at full capacity

because while, yes, you are inarguably beautiful,

I’m very much like a zombie

in that I am really into you for your brains.

It means, I want to give you comfort

and as proper Seattleites

our comfort curls steaming

from mugs clutched between fingers

and tongues tempered to know

a little bitterness enhances warmth.

When I say, “I’ll be right back with coffee”,

I mean you’ve known me to leave,

And I have known you to leave,

and we’ve seen each other run

both away from and toward dangerous things

...like each other

and while we may put cold unknowable distance between us,

if I can provide warmth, or comfort, or a few minutes of peace

rest assured,

even if I have to go for a while,

I’ll be right back, with coffee.

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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 submit to our Fall Issue is September 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/voicemailpoems/id847081003

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 Indiana” by Skyler Reed

Hosted by Logen Cure!

Thank you to our Patreon supporters!

Please contribute to our project:

>> http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems

Subscribe via iTunes:

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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 His Last Name" by Chrissy Martin

>> “Part Waters (Two of Cups)" by Daniel Barnum

>> “Tankman" by Kyle Liang

Hosted by Logen Cure!

Thank you to our Patreon supporters!

Please contribute to our project:

>> http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems

Subscribe via iTunes:

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This week’s poems:

>> “New Orleans Poem” by Zoë Blair-Schlagenhauf

>> "Frozen" by Elliott Ocean

>> “Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful” by Mercedes Lucero

>> “The summer of mourning” by TaneshaNicole

>> “post talk” by alexis briscuso

Hosted by Logen Cure!

Thank you to our Patreon supporters!

Please contribute to our project:

>> http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems

Subscribe via iTunes:

>> https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voicemailpoems/id847081003