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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"You Guys, I Took Up Smoking Again" by Becca Yenser

Poetry via voicemail. Missed calls you need to hear.

Open submissions accepted.
Guidelines at http://voicemailpoems.org

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as silent and holy as an empty church. 
a polished row of pews. you, moon
in the sky, how do you do it? 
your one-handed gravity
holding still the earth. astral magic trick, 
you newly christened old god. 
every family’s forgotten dance is a scar 
on your surface. memory like a bear trap. 
worldfodder magnet. wise old sledgehammer
once smashed through our orbit longways. we were just a pie cooling on the galactic
windowsill. now we say Light &
mean your face, stretched our whole lives
and once reached your shadow. pockmarked
queen of all ships. all flags. can’t sing
a note of worship if it doesn’t include
a word of pain. the night sky’s
opening bell and serene last call, 
nursing your craters like old wounds 
nursing your craters like children. 
your face held high and regal
through eons of the same steady bruise
and somehow you arrive to us with a bouquet
of escape of routes. i have so much
to learn from you, and not just about physics. 
how long did it take you to learn
such luminescent confidence? your brilliant
backlit halo, the way you just float and move
everything, shine your own ligaments to dust. 
when people say they love each other 
to the You and back, is it about distance
or about damage? about some man’s
lonely footprint? and what do we know 
about damage next to you, anyway? 
all our blood clots thick with time
but you have no winds to whisper
your name. sometimes the healing
does not rush through you. prehistoric ocean
or otherwise. there are no channels
you didn’t cut yourself. no way to say Over
in the dead space. no one there to hear it
but a silent star. 
                                                  and a billion other stars.


————————————–

Zachary Goldberg called us from Oakland, CA.

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"Moon" by Zach Goldberg

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


————————————–

Stacey Teague called us from Clonakilty, Ireland.

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"Whero" by Stacey Teague

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.

————————————–

Taylor Jaczin called us from St. Petersburg, FL.


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"Manic Pixie POV" by Taylor Jaczin

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.


————————————–

Caroljean Gavin called us from Winston-Salem, NC.

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"Never Trust A Snowglobe" by Caroljean Gavin

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.


————————————–

Mariah Bosch called us from Fresno, CA.


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"You Guys, I Took Up Smoking Again" by Becca Yenser

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