VOICEMAIL POEMS

Chocolate Polynesian brown was beckoned

to the land of the long white cloud

to work in factories, freezing works, docks,

was beckoned to work hard,

send money back to islands of hibiscus and frangipani

But chocolate Polynesian brown got swallowed,

digested in a stomach churning with acid-filled hate

The outcome? That other shade of brown

//

But dawn,

because you covered your eyes with the dark hands of night

batons bashed on doors,

scaring pregnant women, given barely enough time

to dress while dogs spat their barks through bared teeth

But dawn,

Because you hid behind the horizon

torches blazed, blinding,

breaking sleep and families

as parents were taken from screaming kids

to be jailed then charged then sent back to the islands

Dawn,

because you were silent,

because all murmurings were silenced.

————————————–

Cindy Kurukaanga called us from Aotearoa, New Zealand.

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I studied Italian painters, Giorgione, Titian.

At one job, I’m a glorified secretary.

I answer the phone in my professional voice

and sell gaudy urns to luxe addresses.

My neighbor listens patiently, amused by my young life.

We’re the only Black gay men in our building,

so he has me over for Sunday tea. I fill our cups.

For the heart, he says, adding whiskey to his.

In the 80s, on a fellowship in Spain,

he practiced arias and translated Romani ballads.

After a concert, he presented Leontyne Price

with flowers wrapped in sheer blue paper.

Today, I argue Another Country is Baldwin’s best novel.

My neighbor shares a recipe for chicken paprikash.

Gone like that, he says, flipping through an album of friends

in their youth with fades and thick mustaches.

They could quote Mahogany. They cut up

in the house-inflected dark of a dancefloor,

worldly and glamorous as a Venetian painting.

I refill our cups. A splash of whiskey in his tea.

————————————–

Derrick Austin called us from Chicago, IL.

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so you do the next best thing

and you cut your hair

you follow a youtube video

and a confident-man-hair-stylist-type

shows you how using a mannequin head and swift movements

on your turn you take two ponytails

and the shittiest pair of scissors money can buy

and you snip away at your kinda-long hair

until it becomes less long and hopefully more shape

arms overhead

you’re diving

into what no one can say

today was the first day of April

you got rejected from a job opportunity

you remembered it’s your abuser’s birthday

you sit on one friend’s porch and don’t talk about it

you sit on another’s futon and you do

the night wears on

the day folds in on itself and you catch

a glimpse of your body in the toothpasted mirror

arms overhead

you’re picking fruit

we’ve seen this before

in fact we saw you in this exact position three months ago

in a stranger’s bathroom using arts n craft scissors

you saved the hair before immediately losing it

one day sooner or later you might find a bundle of your locks

wrapped up in a sheet of printer paper with November 24th 2024

scrawled on it in green crayon

there is so much you cannot control but you can choose

the crayon

the scissors

the bathroom where you’ll cut our hair the next time you have to do something

and you can choose what you do when that is no longer enough.

————————————–

Sarena Brown called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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People fell in love during the fall of the Roman Empire

and people were falling in love in 1930s Germany, the Nazis were coming into power and regular German citizens were going on dates and falling in love.

I have new tires on my car so I feel invincible driving to you through the snow,

I am driving to you and a song is on the radio that reminds me of you

and I’m passing all these other cars because I have new tires and it’s snowing so hard but

maybe I’m in love and I have to remind myself

that happy people can still die in a car crash.

There was happiness in 1930s Germany and at the end of Rome, too.

Falling in love doesn’t do anything for the climate crisis, falling in love won't save democracy. It’s late-stage capitalism, it’s the fading days of the Anthropocene,

new tires don’t save me from other drivers and love doesn’t save us from anything really,

but isn’t it nice, for a minute in the snow, to feel so wildly protected?

————————————–

Jill McLaughlin called us from Portland, ME.

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Dad was on the couch, mostly

starving to death in front of us

cancer, stage IV

(for this type, many don’t catch

the earlier stages, and of course

there aren't later ones)

we hung pinecone bird feeders close

to the house, bringing Nature near

when he couldn't go out

we talked about our shared

favorites: the praying mantis, female

cardinal, blue herons, black cats

we talked about Chris Christie taking a swing

at the Bully, about what the hell would make someone crazy

enough to walk into North Korea

we talked about how to take care of mom

where to find the passwords,

who to trust

we talked about the final moment

and how I might not make it

(I did, he waited)

we talked about how a summer would never

be enough time, as the days stretched out

my son, his namesake, waited in the cherry tree

————————————–

Annie Powell Stone called us from Baltimore, MD.

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Let’s be monsters.

Let’s be witches and bitches

and crones

and just

hideous.

Let’s be powerful.

Let’s take and take and take

and grab the world,

just

fucking hold on with claws

and teeth

and refuse to let go.

And let’s be gluttonous.

Let’s devour.

Let’s see what we want,

what delights us,

and let’s inhale it with no

regard for propriety.

With no regard for you.

Let’s be insolent.

Let’s be wanton.

Let’s be ugly.

Let’s show our teeth as a warning sign

before we sink them into your neck.

Let’s be savage and angry.

Let’s say,

This is for me.

This is because I want.

This is because I exist.

This is because I take up space,

as much as I want, and more,

and I survive despite your best efforts

to tamp me down,

and I will fucking wear my defiance

like a punch to the gut

or—

Go ahead. Tell me

the red on my lips is too

suggestive. It’s my

fucking mouth. And I use it to

bite more than anything else.

————————————–

Maia Brown-Jackson called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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Three weeks to Christmas. We bide our time

on the line by conjuring posties of the past—

side-burned and handcuffed, the ones in ‘81

who dared to defy back to work orders.

Got the whole country maternity leave.

Now we fight traffic in trucks that hit 40 degrees,

deliver an endless stream of Sephora and Nespresso,

spend hours alone with the clang of keys on metal,

compete with the Amazon drivers for free

parking spots and as we pass each other on the street

they sometimes stop to ask:

It’s a good job right? For the benefits?

A good job is any job that keeps you out of a tent.

We probably wouldn’t defy like the legends of ’81,

too many struggling with groceries and rent.

Here’s the talking head on the news again.

Sound bites smooth as the 300 thread count shirt he has on.

As if we are a private business, not a rusting crown

corporation. Meant to serve all citizens of the nation,

including its workers who are crippled by inflation.

Every postie’s got a side hustle and a secret dream.

Lauren sews crafts to sell on Etsy.

Reg DJs weddings and Sid drives a taxi.

On Fridays, management makes movie popcorn

to celebrate the end of the week.

Why are we always so hungry?

The smell of fake butter is rich.

We follow it. We eat.

————————————–

Jaime Jacques called us from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

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if you are sad: sit, silent, and bathe in the brine of an olive jar. let the salt consume you till you are preserved in acidity rather than memory, and the blood in your veins might well be that of the ocean. if they ask you how it happened, say: “i didn’t know how to swim.” this is false, but so are the teeth they blatantly lie through. (you do not owe them the truth if they don’t give it to you. do not sacrifice your bitterness for these saps.) return to the olives. swallow the pits: wrinkled fools have no place here, at least not since he died. stare as they swim around your plate, reminiscent of almonds, and remember how he taught you that the amygdala handles emotion. maybe by overconsumption you can erase all you ever knew. when asked, say he was your mentor. when asked, say he was kind. when asked, say you’d do anything to see him again. the olive jar says you should take only nine, yet seventeen have passed through your teeth. it is okay. it will all, one day, be okay.

————————————–

Annabelle Chen called us from Milton, MA.

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Lake Berryessa, azure at our backs the man from Toluca slips me

lozenges from under his tongue Spanish alive in my mouth

touches the screen reaching deep lights from his phone plays me

my first cumbia: chee chih chih

woodsmoke unfurls decomposed flesh dusted bones awakening

at his cue turning slight curving threaded magnets loop

khee ki-ki khee ki-ki khee ki-ki each scratch of rake pulling me

into the earth thrumming his hand at my hip la guira’s song

tethered ancient spine’s pulse hungry, touch the heart of before

knowing how to fly, certain feathered tz sts sts tz

————————————–

Tatiana Chaterji called us from unceded Ohlone land in Oakland, CA.

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"There is a look one sees,

the mouth somehow desperate–

…

the fear of death, taking as its form

dedication to hunger…"

- Louise Glück

b/c one day i will want for nothing

b/c one day i will not want

b/c one day i will need nothing to want for

b/c one day my body will cease to function

b/c one day my body will function outside itself

b/c one day my body will cease functioning as a vessel for causeless desire

b/c one day my body will cease desiring cease to function

b/c one day the flesh of the earth will clothe the body’s naked hunger

b/c one day i will feed off nothing but the dirt’s choicest cuts

b/c one day the dirt’s best nourishment will stonewall the body’s needing & wanting

b/c one day i will become dirt

my gut become dirt

pelvis become dirt

hands legs spinal column become dirt

skull cavity encompass dirt drawing down dirt to become

dirt

one day

b/c the hungry ghost of my body seeks grene pasture & stil waters

one day

b/c feeding the 5000 remains a miracle, not a reality

one day

b/c desperate measures leave ample room for development

one day

b/c 2Bd / 2Br Luxury Apts resign us to dirt

b/c the PIN #: **** issues DECLINE

& no other

b/c a woman’s body is a grave

b/c the rectum is a grave

b/c the coffin of my body cradles your body

it will accept all manner of things

————————————–

Diandra Williams called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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