VOICEMAIL POEMS

money runs like blood through the big american corpse

my big american corpse takes the subway chews

the same piece of gum too long like cud like cows

we mill in the smoke between tracks eyes wide

and sightless our big american mouths follow hunger

to hunger won’t see the plainclothes cop until it's too

late won’t see him put his hands on a dirty arm

won’t remember where that arm goes when it

disappears into the non-place of a blue and white

van sent to that other island where they take bodies

we fear as if a person could vanish in a burst of white

light as if a person were a problem we could solve

do you believe we are innocent like animals

like characters inserted for comic relief do you believe

when the last brown face disappears from your block

you will finally feel safe do you believe to feel safe

is the same as happiness do you believe everything you’re told

did you believe you’d lose nothing when you asked

the machine to think for you to write your wedding vows

and grocery lists to tell you when to smile when to jump

how high did you start to believe it could not turn

its face back to us that it would not show its teeth to quiet

beasts fawning at its feet it’s hard for me to say ‘us’

even when I know it’s the right word even when I know

I’m the ghost in the shell we’re the ghosts it’s one shell

and just when I believe I can’t stand another moment

alive moving like oil like money through this lifeless body

my body tries to survive a man clips my shoulder

he steadies me a thin hand dusty knuckles

he smiles before he turns to face the little black box

from his pocket heat of his hand still on my shoulder

place our eyes met in the air human easy

place where his dark american face meets my pale

american face meets wind pouring out hot from the tunnel

and the man waits next to me now his beautiful dark cheeks

and his beautiful dark eyes move beneath their purple lids

and the nod and nod of his head to what I can't

hear the two of us wait for the train and the two of us

wait like fledglings on a high branch for the moment his face

turns back to my face and there is no face left between us

————————————–

Birch Wiley called us from Brooklyn, NY.

voicemailpoems.org/submit/

facebook.com/voicemailpoems

x.com/voicemailpoems

bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social

instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I heard the first note on a train out of town

A certain je ne sais quoi was ignited

With the flair of a madman, sprung out of my chair

Slammed emergency stop and alighted

Waltzed up and down the boarded up boulevard

Enjoyed the sensation of the silent street

Underscored by the tune of a tuba at noon

Which put the soul back into my feet

Spinning round to the downtown dive bar

A subterranean musical flavour

A menagerie of brass bells and ornaments

Each a new spectacle to savour

She’s a saxophone on a Sunday night

A rollercoaster of instinctive grooves

Dazzling, golden and just out of sight

I’m inspired by the way that she moves

Our passionate energy rises and simmers

She whispers to me at the end of the song

A paradise blossoms from the words that I hear-

‘If music be the food of love, play on’

————————————–

Lena Hadley called us from Hampshire, UK.

voicemailpoems.org/submit/

facebook.com/voicemailpoems

x.com/voicemailpoems

bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social

instagram.com/voicemailpoems

This time I’m breast.

Face down, breasts hanging

as still as I could be.

I brought my breasts, body, here,

it feels like. I am not

exactly

my body today.

I remember choosing

dying in my sleep

during the childhood game,

as if we could predict or choose

that kind of ending.

I repeat

the soft animal of your body –

it hurts to forget the geese, Mary Oliver’s name,

to rest my middle on a plastic support,

even if covered with a towel.

In the waiting room,

I don’t think of Elizabeth Bishop

and the horrifying

breasts in the National Geographic

she read in another waiting room

as a child.

I am an adult, reading about park rangers

working with beavers to save the forests

through dams.

To trust an animal, to trust ourselves.

To trust that nature can be contained.

I am sure I will die of cancer.

Does this stave off the car accidents?

————————————–

Chloe Yelena Miller called us from Washington, DC.

voicemailpoems.org/submit/

facebook.com/voicemailpoems

x.com/voicemailpoems

bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social

instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Dear moon child of the Universe

wake up and lift your golden feet

& wave your hand's glory to your

placid disposition

however humble it may be

without surrendering your

human dignity

For you have the worthy right

to be present here void of

dark imaginings of who's

over your halo & beneath

the sole of your feet

Dear child see here as loud

as the echoes of the walls of your heart

not as broken dreams shattered

by tricks, lies and politics of many men

who are here enabled with

authority-power to cancel the

dreamers & nightcrawlers

As a treader of this path

stomping on eggshells

moonwalking on the surface of

every mountains without

whisper or tell...

Sing your songs loud to your silence

& to the silence around you to halt

all silences

Even though you encounter defeat

& the unfair blows of life knocks

you down to earth flat — facedown!

Beat your wings & rise from the

dusty fall & wear your blackened

eye with pride...

and stand firmly in the sun with a will

tattooed across your chest...

fearless, deathless as the kill

with shining sword and shield

ready to battle... (to bury the dead in you)

willing to give life another

benefit of doubt

For the dream is louder than the

noisy confusion of life

Blaze it... don't

smoke it!

————————————–

Uchechukwu Onyedikam called us from Lagos, Nigeria.

voicemailpoems.org/submit/

facebook.com/voicemailpoems

x.com/voicemailpoems

bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social

instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Do you remember that summer

I spent trying to catch your snort in a jar?

That snort you’d bury under a cough every time.

A boy breaking through the drywall of a man.

I wrote twenty-six poems about you.

I gave you a warehouse and turpentine

on your cuffs and night air in your gaze.

But you wore yellow baseball caps, socks with sandals.

Minnesota stamped in cotton, the blockiest state.

Remember that time I poured boiling water

into your roommate’s soda-lime glass?

Not a clean break. A web. Tiny cracks all

through the body and it just fell apart in your hands.

Anyway, I'm on a podcast now,

did you know? They asked me

why I built the AI tool.

I said I saw a gap I wanted

to bridge. Because students weren't watching

the lectures. Retention. Engagement.

The host asked if the burden of

responsibility should fall on individuals

and I said no it's structural,

and the right model could fix it. And I was

so earnest, you would’ve slapped your

left knee, cracked that snort open,

and called me a sap.

When I was beachcombing in Aruba I found a rock

shaped like a brain and it reminded me of you. I held it

to my ear the way you’d hold a shell,

expecting the wild heat of your heartbeat

from that morning after. But

there was only the aural tragedy of the tide —

the same wave, crashing into

my ankles, over and over.

I could build another reason for you to orbit my desk.

I could buy us another summer with the jar open.

I’ll bring the rock.

Put your ear to the other side. Listen—

I learned things in the specific key of your voice and called it professional development.

I rearranged an entire curriculum so you could walk past my door on Tuesdays.

I was always making

something beautiful and useless,

always pressing that rock

to your side of the wall,

wasn’t I?

————————————–

Marissa M. Zhu called us from Detroit, MI.

voicemailpoems.org/submit/

facebook.com/voicemailpoems

x.com/voicemailpoems

bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social

instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Do birds fear heights, the way

we fear living?

Pigeons above all, always

so low to the ground,

and squirrels, not avian but aerial,

crossed wires

with cheeks full of

preparedness,

We risk so much to prepare

for so little,

The mourning dove is watching

from a higher branch

this evening.

Their wings are the green

of the faraway part of the sky

during thunder,

They strike it rich

on a wire,

before the mute storm,

The atmosphere bursts like a train

through the neighborhood,

The train has come to see what it can pummel,

but everything has been cleared

for its path,

It is an arrow,

Just the air breaks,

and the sparks flick themselves until

they burn on air and die.

Composed of listening light,

orchestral sleep is prescribed,

Upon every eyelid,

over goose-down or under bridge,

The green pretense knows no leisure,

Our dreams underneath its weight are dastardly,

but doctor’s orders are rarely easy,

Even the even-handed ones,

It's only Wednesday

when the sky mimics

the diamond’s light,

cupped over my finger.

All things, almost, you can never

have cupped long enough to hold,

So love becomes a marriage,

and lightening a sound,

so late, so late,

In one baroque spring,

could have been this year

or sixty-five million before,

Dirt’s veins

strike it rich.

————————————–

Vasiliki Argyris called us from Philadelphia, PA.

voicemailpoems.org/submit/

facebook.com/voicemailpoems

x.com/voicemailpoems

bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social

instagram.com/voicemailpoems

be still

listen

slip through the needle eye of silence.

leave behind your preference for black licorice, your talent for word games

your grandfather’s watch….your hair, your skin, your teeth

enter naked as bones

ask the furred, the feathered, the finned

how to ford the river, how to scale the rock cliff

how to spin your flax to gold

feel the floor beneath your absence,

the wide planks of the old house

that were once proud firs breathing out cool fog,

touch the skies those trees held up

stand before gods that are strangers

whose language is harsh in your ears

and do not flinch

trust kindness when you find it-

the flesh surrounding the apple’s seed

the apple carried in the beak of a raven

become the raven’s fingered wings

flying through time

sifting wounds and wonders

become your one unbearable wound

cry tears that freeze in six-pointed geometry

then fall and fall

until they smooth mountains

be the unmistakable snowflake

that launches the avalanche

and buries the village

become the thaw

uncover a memory of wholeness

drip that sweet clean water

on the growing vine

of generations

the vine that will someday flower with the twin stars

of a baby’s open hands

a baby who will cry out to you

from a dense and troubled darkness

and you will answer:

heal child, the way is in your blood.

————————————–

Sophia Rosenberg called us from Lasqueti Island, BC, Canada.

voicemailpoems.org/submit/

facebook.com/voicemailpoems

x.com/voicemailpoems

bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social

instagram.com/voicemailpoems

We stalk the banks

of swamps and slow rivers

in silence, our voices too full

of clam shells for hunting.

We blossom in violence

spring-loaded heads

striking the mud

for insects, salamanders, frogs

our feathers arsenals

of indigo knives,

necks adorned

with fishbone needles.

Yet we fly so tenderly

blooming from rocks

slow wingbeats

folding the air

toward soft chests.

For some, we are easy,

conspicuous targets

for others, kites

pulling our own

strings through sunset

nectarine eyes

in winter’s bare trees.

You often see us

alone and wonder

how we mate

but you haven’t seen

what births us—the building,

the gathering, the shared

warmth of bodies.

Alaskan coastline

campus quad fountain

we will adapt.

We don’t come seeking

attention

tracing water

with a seamstress touch

but our exits are

subtle as drag queens

dropping coins

for starving poets.

Wherever we go

the marshes may dry

and the slick-calm ponds

may grow scales of ice—

they have, for centuries

but so have we persisted.

Soon, more than this,

we will know abundance

our beaks writhing with fish.

————————————–

Laura Casteel called us from Pittsboro, NC.

voicemailpoems.org/submit/

facebook.com/voicemailpoems

x.com/voicemailpoems

bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social

instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I feel a grief for time taken

I feel a grief for time torn

I feel a grief that isn’t mine

I feel a grief for another body in my body

I watch The Chronology of Water knowing I will feel grief, and I do

I watch it while I’m sick, mucus stuck in my throat, blood in my nostril, air trapped and hard to reach

I watch The Chronology of Water with the book in my bag in my lap

I feel a grief that needs art

I feel a grief that bleeds art

I feel a grief that runs red, bitten, the director said her favorite color is bitten

I feel a grief that rivers

I feel a grief that needs art

I need art

I need art

Grief needs art

Grief needs art

I’m crying inside, the cry is a bubble in my lung, beating

I want to cry on the outside but my body isn’t

I want to cry but the pill I’m on makes it hard to

I used to cry when I didn’t want to which is why I wanted the pill

I used to bleed more than I was supposed to which is why I wanted the pill

I used to bleed for two weeks and through every pad every hour

I used to say the bleedpain feels like sharkteeth eating its way out of me

The last time I had bleedpain my lover ate it out of me

I used to feel the bleedpain for the week before I bled

I used to feel the bleedpain for the week after I bled

I wanted the pill to make the bleeding slow

I wanted the pill to make the bleedpain stop

I wanted the bleeding to stop

I wanted the bleeding to stop

I didn’t have enough room for it

I never had enough pads to absorb it

I don't have enough room for it

I wanted the bleedpain to stop

I didn’t have enough time for it

I don’t have enough time for it

I didn’t have enough time for it

I don’t have enough time for it

I didn’t have enough sick time for how much time I felt sick

I didn’t have enough sick time for how much time I bled

I didn’t have enough sick time for how much I bled

I don’t have enough time for how much time I feel sick

I don’t have enough time for how much time I feel sick so I call a doctor to call an office and the office calls me and asks if I really need what the doctor says I need and I ask the office how much more do they need how much more pain do they need how much more pain do they need how much more pain do they need to give me the time I need to be in pain

I don’t want to look at the news because the news is about people in pain

I don’t want to look at the news because the news is about people in pain

I look at the news because the news is about people in pain

I look at the news because the news is about people in pain

I look at the news at the people being killed

I look at the news because where else am I supposed to look

I look at the news because how else am I supposed to see

I want to scream so I write

I want to riot so I write

I want to break so I write

I want to burrow so I write

I want to grieve so I write

I want to stop so I write

I want to build so I write

I want to so I write

I want to I write

I want so I write

————————————–

Emma Sheinbaum called us from Brooklyn, NY.

voicemailpoems.org/submit/

facebook.com/voicemailpoems

x.com/voicemailpoems

bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social

instagram.com/voicemailpoems

In corpse pose I practice feeling the satin lining of my coffin,

imagine the gently ruffled rim meeting my stiff skirt.

Next month, I’m attending a wedding in a cemetery,

and I can’t decide what people don’t like about that.

Who wouldn’t want to haunt their own grave

and then go dancing?

This month, my sister turns a quarter of a century

around in her pocket, contemplates saving it for later.

By the time I was her age, I’d spent my two cents on

stockings that would rip in the same line along my shins.

Today, I play dead on a yoga mat, like this will be the moment

I’m enlightened by mortality

and not like this feeling has been

shadowing me since birth.

I stretch out the elastic in my veins

as if they’re under warranty.

Head still, hands crossed over heart,

I inhale for a count of eight

decades to fog mirrors with the water

my body heats to steam each morning.

————————————–

Mary Geschwindt called us from New York, NY.

voicemailpoems.org/submit/

facebook.com/voicemailpoems

x.com/voicemailpoems

bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social

instagram.com/voicemailpoems