VOICEMAIL POEMS

we did not hold hands

often we clenched legs

under the table

hands were too public

for two who did not know

how feelings socailize

we sat on a bench

on the corniche

watching the nile at noon

it was full and calm

we could hear the wind sing

to the trees on its sides

you held my hand

and I looked

as you took it towards you

the wind stopped singing

and my heart wanted

to come out and taste the water

I said look how my hand

looks no matter

how many times I wash it

you said look how mine

sweats and then asked

if it bothered me

I held your wrist

and folded your hand

and brushed it with mine

again and again

until it is my hand that is wet

you smiled and looked down

happy and shy like a bird

folding into itself

I asked you for a kiss

I could not say it

I wrote it in a notebook

you once wrote your name in

words were too intimate

for two who did not know

how love talks

the notebook became

a pigeon back and forth

between us it held words

our mouths dared not admit

you wrote a falouka

is where you get one

you knew the nile

had none that day

no one teaches a girl

how to want

without bruising

the family name

so you swallowed it

and it bloomed somewhere

I could not reach

and I loved before

I had the language

then it came in a dialect

I had to translate for myself

so I spat it out

and kept the bitter ache

I would go through

your things

and asked about them

I claimed to get to know you

better through the small and ordinary

to break what ice may be left

you said I know

but I secretly hoped

I would be mistaken

for your watermelon lipstick

and go home with you

but you went home

and I stayed

I pass by the bench

and ask it why

are you still here

it says nothing but I hear

echoes of your laughter

so I sit and watch

the nile full and calm

but the wind no longer sings

it just blows

and I get cold easily nowadays

but I wait

a falouka might pass

————————————–

Muhammad Rabih called us from Egypt.

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after Ocean Vuong

and why

this want

for permanence surround

sound my life with

backups

sound out my name and

it’s almost a library

flower pressed screen dazed

stillness

a twinkie and her

wrapper words

she presses in the shape of a

body I too

will one day

be glad I am

no longer

violet

and instead fertilizer

no mama’s memoir

no

mama to read my

memoir will be

ocean

open ooooo like whale sounds

I will linger forever in the

aqua

uh huh I used to be

fern

now I’m

feather my body retreats

for

ever/y line I write I

forget my hands can strangle

recycle like

madness like magic

I immortalize the white I

wrangle

with pen body

oh

body

earth will ground us

whole

————————————–

Fiona Martinez called us from San Diego, CA.

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Tonight you lay on your own couch, trying to head off fixation. Your cigar is just a. You hold it oscillating between Cuban and. You are not. You tell yourself this. You flip through your notebook, and it is filled with pictures of you riding the night. The cigar is in your fingers, which place it to your lips. You take a luxurious puff. Wake up, you whimper, and linger, eyes glazing. Up, you manage. Up. The notebook falls from your other hand. Gravity is repression, you think and try to not. You know how you will feel when you awaken. You can already feel the cold sweat coming.

————————————–

JeFF Stumpo called us from Litchfield, NH.

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do not be afraid of your own heart beating

there must be chocolate maybe even daily

I would recommend buying the better cheese

drink orange juice in the morning it will help

drink wine or whiskey and write things down

it is always good to know your own handwriting

remember how clean sheets feel and hot baths

keep lip balm by your bed keep a tissue in your pocket

buy a lamp so your room is warm and buy things

so they are memories later and look at your hands

they are beautiful! Once a week make a nice meal

because you can and don’t be afraid to be alone

that would be like throwing away perfectly good

socks or bras keep them and buy new underwear

it’s easy to forget but let your friends remind

you and remember your friends and their favorite

colors and kiss someone just to taste their lips

love your apartment even when the microwave breaks

love food even when it is toast from the toaster

love your hands and your skin put rings on your fingers

wear a designer lipstick and keep it in your pocket

————————————–

Charlotte Alexander called us from Moscow, ID.

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What bloomed from grief

came instinct,

came wrath.

The aftermath of my longing

will show on your back like Lichtenberg figures

after the subtlety

of a strike.

My beautiful friend,

I do think heat causes molecules

to excite,

and if you let me,

we’ll honor the burn marks after this smudging.

But not before prayer, not before

kneeling behind you

your scent, curiously ancient I’m

suddenly wet

I want you protected, well fed. So please, let me

sage you. The air around you.

The air around persimmons you’ve hung out

to dry, leaving you / not bruised

but sugar-bloomed into a world you want to

breathe in.

And you’re gonna wanna know what becomes of it, the tsuris of us.

Probably nothing, it’s nothing, right? I keep

finding you in kitchens.

And I, tending to a grow bag full of fairytale eggplants,

their blooms bowing down as if in

shame

or in love

or as if grieving was a thing of

shame or love or is it

your scent, curiously ancient,

that is the intimate why of my grieving.

————————————–

C. Rivera called us from New York, NY.

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three soldiers in tinfoil jackets

roasting on the bottom oven rack

she’d cut the ends off one too long for its own good

hacked chunks from the pudgy pocked one

sliced the largest of the lot into quarters

pulling used foil from a crumpled stash she

manhandled the starchy meal

into silver uniforms

tried to unwrap and uncrinkle

but eventually abandoned hope

supper could be smooth or smartly dressed

when the oven sang out its warning

she skinned them from the foil

burned fingers in her haste to separate

what she’d spent so much energy on

wadded up the bits she couldn’t reuse and

chucked ‘em in the bin

the bin

it’s where most of us find ourselves

after a relationship

sharing space with those silver skins

not fitting any better than the aluminum did

her and her meal prep

her and her insistence others should hide

what she plans to devour

————————————–

C. Late called us from Kansas City, MO.

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I want to write about eternity too

just like the cats

probing at their breakfasts

or your two week old hands Isadora

brushing my beard like sleepwalking

windshield wipers or the way the sun

uses maple leaves as lampshades

if we can spend as much of ourselves

in time as out of it if our conch shell ears

keep after months the cymbal samba of the sea

if your feet tender toweled and purpling

remember the ant hills and thumb tacks

and jelly spills they haven’t found yet

if your big sister and her enormous feelings

and your mom and her incomparable well

of kindness and how they use each moment

almost like a ladle if everything is like breath

if we can use jazz the way we use a shower

if everything can be a little of everything else

if the naked basement bulb of my patience

in its morse distress can most times be enough

if the slapstick surgeon of memory can hang in

if the horror show doesn’t get too hungry

for more and more dimensions if we can start

carpet bombing the nations of the earth

with dollar bills and daisy petals instead

if our favorite pizza place can please fall

into the amber bath of immortality and

we can live there in perennial Friday evening

they’re bringing cups of ice and the ovens are awake

————————————–

Dylan Emmons called us from Poughkeepsie, NY.

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Storms– Wave

action– Sand

crash– A kite coming

close–

Wobbling

moon– Desire

work– These optimisms–

There’s your thunder– Your downpour

across the street–

A kid beating a tree

with its stick– Panting

about every day–

Too hot

to worry

about plot–

Chewing

ice into the mic–

Today a hundred-

year-old woman

died– Separately

I saw so many

maggots later–

As a recluse

I really went

all out–

————————————–

Jenna Cardinale called us from Brooklyn, NY.

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after Chappell Roan

The cold knows me in ways you never will.

Darkness clamps her hand over the city’s mouth.

Still, light. Music rises like smoke. And God is anything

but subtle — this joint, our first kiss. Now my heart’s

a helium balloon — pink, no strings attached.

Sailing high among the lanterns — paper clouds

in a makeshift sky in a lesbian bar where

I keep my sunglasses on so you can’t see me

cry. If we’re already in Hell, then that explains

middle school, which isn’t when I knew. But the body,

like God, offers signs. Neon and to the point —

Open. Welcome. Thank You. When I called desire

by name, the fog lifted from our past. (Seventh grade

art class. I wanted to tell you.) Twelve years

later, your palms are electric against my cheeks.

Eyes, the color of parched earth — so here is my grief.

Winter, like any crush, renders my layers useless.

I forgive myself. In New York, there are no chance

encounters. There are choices other than fear.

————————————–

Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro called us from Wharton, NJ.

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May 10th

Perseverance is terminal,

Every day dully getting up.

The end times keep edging us

But I’m a Taurus—

I prefer to come

And to go another round.

They shot Katy Perry

Into orbit, then let her back in.

We turned the mission into memes

To stop thinking of burned old growth forests,

Boiling oceans, where all the bees have gone.

In the shuttle there was something

To do with a world tour.

Will the wet bulb be worth it?

A senator says we all have to die sometime,

Which is news to me!

I am always telling people

How Katy Perry killed a nun.

Now she’s coming for the rest of us.

I too could call myself an astronaut;

We tell ourselves stories in order to et cetera.

I wanted heaven

But space spat me out.

I heard earth girls are easy.

I’m so easy I only learned how to fight

Back last week. I didn’t win.

But I cured my depression

By making the bed!

The cure lasts ‘til just past

The point I’ve smoothed the duvet.

I draw the curtains. I play a record.

I shake my locally-sourced oat milk

To eke out one more use.

Does it bother me, us fucking other people?

Jury’s out. But if I picture you

Brushing another woman’s hair

From her mouth an atom bomb detonates.

I see all my bones. They are female

And furious. They rattle and shriek like death

Metal. Don’t fucking brush another woman’s hair

From her mouth. A hole’s a hole, darling,

But tenderness is non-renewable.

Bottle your affection for only me.

I’m sorry.

I have to get up again.

I hate when there’s only one outcome.

————————————–

Jamie Hood called us from Brooklyn, NY.

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