VOICEMAIL POEMS

The bells like a leviathan breach the membrane of the liquid dark, tumbling forth like a vanguard incited by adrenaline and the call of drumbeats. The God Paradox States: 1. If God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, He has the power and also the desire to end evil. Through the open window, the January air bites at the alveoli lodged deep behind my sternum; moonbeams litter the asphalt in geometric shapes refracted by a million prisms all the way down. 2. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He has the knowledge and also the power to end evil. 3. If God is omniscient and omnibenevolent, He has the knowledge and also the desire to end evil The night is austere, the world holding its collective breath for the dawn of sunrise and the gift of another day; I drive by the specter of the old cemetery, and the bells continue to toll calling the faithful back to God. 4.) Evil exists. 5.) Therefore… My unfinished Ph.D.in Nietzschean philosophy floats into my forebrain like an air bubble. “God is dead,” I tell the bells, recalling my catechisms from a former lifetime with a sardonicism that feels almost like mourning. “This is not for God,” the bells tell me. “This is just for you.” I drive and I listen to the notes dancing through the dark on the way to my ears – the chimes and the melody and the perfect fifths – as the night opens up ahead of me and the rest of my life beckons from right down the road. ————————————– Shannon Frost Greenstein called us from Jenkintown, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

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

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

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

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

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

For years the school bus took the same path past your grandmother’s house—just uphill from yours each day the fields flickering past, sometimes filled with corn, autumn filled with hay bales that long swinging arm of the sprinkler tempting in the summer heat, always running as we’d drive back to your house on the way home from town and one year, many years later homesick, soul-wandering spied dandelions growing, a trove near the treeline and parked near the ditch to sit for a moment with my thoughts all running rampant when they turned to you, and childhood how second grade best friends lived extremes up and down the hill, across the trampoline riding top speed on gravel roads I used to ride my bike to you, we lived close enough to each other it was possible for my little body to pedal itself there and back without exerting what it can’t spend what it doesn’t have, maybe still lacks the dandelions far across the field yellow bright mirage in the distance I would walk there now if you’d meet me. ————————————– Nicholas Bonarski called us from Grand Rapids, MI. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

There’s a hopeful part of me that thinks you love me more than you need to understand But I know you because I’m the same as you, Kindred Spirit grandpa So I’ll tell you that: Ken dolls don’t have nipples And what if he ended up that way by having top surgery, Double incision for ultimate contouring? Thus I think it stands that Ken is a transmasculine icon Loved and adored as a god because that’s what Barbie and Ken are, The deities that underscore what it means to be a person, that who we are is limitless. Thus Ken being trans stands to reify our place in the natural order And I think I’m like him in that my gender isn’t Barbie, I’m separate and me and I don’t want my nipples. In the end I’ll look like Ken, limitless But I’m still the grandkid you play ping pong with every week And this isn’t any more different than being a writer amongst a family of scientists And I know you don’t get that either So I’ll explain it as this: I never really grew out of playing with Barbies and Kens So the stories I’d give them Now take the form of manuscripts ————————————– L. Amariti called us from Voorhees, NJ. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

"a childhood bedroom is a whole world" after Cheryl Boyce-Taylor there was always someone day-dreaming hurtling towards the other world falling for somebody’s son grass-stained knees weaving in and out of love condemning their mother tongue twisting tradition out of ghost tale crossing an ocean on a paper-mache boat painting their nails black dressed in robin’s egg blue bright red gushing between them legs having a tea party with a beast mistaking a father for a prince fathering the future from a question-mark counting sheep learning to read between the lines reading limbs shrouding their body in glitter befriending the witch within making mud soup under moonlight drinking it all in commending Mother Earth bound by something soft tender-hearted beating on a kitchen pan drum bruising their ego begetting life in verse crooning in arms blessed divinely alive ————————————– Gabriela González called us from Brooklyn, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I hang my jacket in the hallway her apartment is old made from shoestring potatoes it smells like a jelly factory. Against the wall a man’s face eyes folded laces around his neck. That’s your Uncle, dear. He barred her from doing much of anything when he was around then he died. She asked the doctors to keep his eyes and brain alive and put them in a fish tank. That night when she got home she put on a mambo record, poured herself a vodka, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke in his eyes. The tank is down the hall full of algae and bubbles. She has it hidden behind a curtain. On the wall are photos of President Gerald Ford, our family on vacation, and antique pictures of naked ladies. How many naked ladies do have to look at before I get something to eat? I ask. I’ll think about it, she says. Behind the curtain skirts are hung up, sponges tied together, a bag of teeth. My Auntie takes a photo of me so my parents will see the child they raised, buzz-cut, roadworthy. My Auntie tells me stories about my family, takes me shopping, for sweaters and sneakers. When she gets excited she makes the sound of a happy seagull and spins like a mooring buoy. ————————————– Bill Ratner called us from Los Angeles, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Once I visited my old roommate at a film festival on Scheveningen beach where the winning movie was something avant garde and vaguely religious we did not understand. Afterwards we danced to Madonna's “Like a Prayer” within the sand dunes all night, the wind transforming the blanket around my shoulders into wings, my roommate recounting how their friends in Atlanta held their newborn for the first time. We biked miles back into town and laid next to a canal. As we smoked weed, they confessed they might never be able to live in our home country again. I know, but tonight let’ s pretend we’re the loves of our lives, I retorted, swinging a stick to hit another out of the air. Murmuration began overhead, the birds changing phase according to the relative strengths of our anger, wonder, and fear. The sky moved without permission. We let the mosquitoes circle and bite our legs bloody until light. Small volumes of ourselves hung in the air around us as we ignored all the ways to start over. ————————————– Cole Pragides called us from San Francisco, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Our eyes meet on the rear-view mirror Scorched earth passes by Stretched by the mile, rolled windows for letting the poem breathe. Tainted. A light contour is drawn on your white tank top, above, fifty-three well-placed chest hairs are just enough. God, this drink is awful. Then why do you keep drinking it? He says, as he maintains a firm grip on my thigh with one hand as he drives with the other. Hollow teeth and all. I don't know (I do) I wanted to try something new, Feel something, be someone. We order Chinese takeout, you insist on paying and I let you grope my manhood, sheltered by a well fitting pair of washed Levi’s in return. Me gusta la coquetería, me gustas tú. Two solitary ice cubes cling, melting by the nightstand, Long gone are the excuses obscured by curtains. A card is drawn, our breaths equalize. We watch Ripley on a screen fashioned with a rosary on one of its corners. While he bounces, he looked at me with those blank eyes so enamoured, So lost At sea, Like the body of Dickie Greenleaf deep inside the Amalfi coast. His drowned gaze, Somewhere in between Lust And midnight, Penetrates me, to the point where I couldn’t distinguish who was penetrating who. So I find myself here, while your head lays on my chest. I know what you want to hear, but for you, it doesn’t. You play with my pubes and I kiss your forehead. Sometimes We laugh, comparing ourselves to the TV series that we barely acknowledge - Good thing we don’t have a tragedy of our own nor bizarre love triangles - Right. Inhale, exhale. He kisses my neck, mi amor, mi vergoncito, mi Bocanegra. I can’t say that I don’t feel the same, Showing restraint is of no use upon wretched land. Outside the Jacarandas bloom, The sunset has punched its card. This is something I cannot give you. Added weight forces my chest you arise even further, it knows where I am, This body of mine, For its going the extra mile, So there’s no honor among thieves, Fine, if you insist, I will go wherever you go, I will try the chicken tikka masala, I will reply to your “mi amores”, I will play your games, I will be the stud who steals you a kiss in public. I will love you the way you want to be loved. Solo no me pidas la noche. ————————————– Erick Flores Diaz called us from Morelia, Michoacán. México. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems