voicemail poems

poetry via voicemail / missed calls you need to hear

[voicemailpoems]

Brittany Rogers called us from Detroit, MI.

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[voicemailpoems]

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Rasheed Copeland called us from Washington, D.C.

This poem previously appeared in Split this Rock.

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[voicemailpoems]

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Kevin Kantor called us from New York, NY.

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[voicemailpoems]

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Kolawole Samuel Adebayo called us from Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria.

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Lauren Licona called us from Sanford, FL.

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[voicemailpoems]

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Rodrick Minor called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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[voicemailpoems]

VOICEMAIL POEMS - Summer 2019

~ JUST DROPPED ~

Featuring:

Rodrick Minor - “AIN’T WE LUCKY WE GOT ‘EM GOOD TIMES” (listen)

Lauren Licona - “Lightness Was Never Our Concern But Today We Are the Opposite of Heavy” (listen)

Kolawole Samuel Adebayo - “Ode to a Lost Brother” (listen)

Kevin Kantor - “Rewrites” (listen)

Rasheed Copeland - “The Book of Silence” (listen)

Brittany Rogers - “The Year Caught Out There Became My Theme Song” (listen)

Gisselle Yepes - “When You Bleed for One Hundred and Five Days” (listen)

Anthony Moll - “You Cannot Save Here” (listen)

Chisom Okafor - “In Praise of Open Doors” (listen)

Warren C. Longmire - “Bitter Offerings” (listen)

Chelsea Bunn - “Forgiveness” (listen)

C.M. Crockford - Raspberry Picking (listen)

Fargo Tbakhi - “Reasons Not to Die” (listen)

Laura Cronk - “Rest” (listen)

Kiran Bath - “Waning Gibbous” (listen)

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[voicemailpoems]

A faraway siren reminds me of a dream in which the bathtub filled with orange fish, their viscous heads lurching from the open drain. Meanwhile, something outside caught on fire and then the fish were in the cashew trees, writhing in their quiet frenzy. How awful, I thought, to be in two places at once and be dying in both. No, I have never been the same since. Bright is the early morning. The air bears no violent gesture and everything is calling my name. A ripe leaf settles on the empty road—inconsequential as a hair—yet it stills me like a fired gun.

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Sofia Valencia called us from Provincetown, MA.

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[voicemailpoems]

At sixteen, I was told I couldn’t hold in my voice in my sleep, and every night when I shifted my body, words followed restless sleep.

My mother told me how her mother hid house keys, afraid of her daughter rising corpse-like and slipping into the night instead of just speaking, all while asleep.

One night, I recorded my throat gasping out con todo lo puedo sentir aqui and imagined my hand thumping against my chest, drunk with sleep.

I tried to cover my lips, muffling my mouth with cotton sheets, but as I kept getting tangled in the fibers, syllables slipped through sleep.

When I tried to fit an explanation neatly into the box of myself, I found Somniloquy, a jumbled latin word, when broken apart, murmuring loqui (speak) and somnus (sleep).

So what are we doing my disembodied voice asked me one night. I couldn’t answer, instead turning towards and away from my pillow, sleepless.

Less and less could I close the shutters of my eyes, afraid what my tongue would let loose when I couldn’t be awake to stop it. This sleep-

talking I’ve somehow inherited from my mother like an accent, like her real voice asking Mónica, is it over? But it’s in my sleep.

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Mónica Garcia called us from Chicago, IL.

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[voicemailpoems]

may-be tonite’ll be the nite I rinse the dick that’s remained holed up in a ziploc at the foot of another week may-be sada abe Pisces moon someone at work says feedback sandwich and I almost throw up a leaf or My hands my god today god-heavy today a blown speaker in the hours’ murky silence casting fantasy feedback to a wishful bottom-feeder ie me, a perked-ear asseater praying in the supplies closet please, a way out of to- day or may-be begging a morrow that’ll be that leach that sucked n left Like damn I thought there was at least one thing in the world that stayed, reliable in its taking but learned a leaving lesson when it blooded inner upper thigh & dipped back into the lakelife of its leach-beneath unseen Left a burn mark and a lil leak Woke up tapt like a sap tree She says ‘may-be your heart has to go unsupervised for a little while’ as together heart & I peel the sticky pelt of denial from our daily — wavin bye to what binds us on those timefree blood-drunk manic eves— as it wades on its own deeper into grief sea Woke on a eve of a new coors lite to ’ttach leaches all over this filmy teal- green cock and suck two-weeks-ago’s party out its sleepy ridges place those filled-to-the-scolex slug bods over my middle slit Over my two day-oiled lids Over my easy demeanor Over a pisces moon And put it all back in like may-be like mem-ry like the lake could be-my may- be body into which this wriggling sliver of need carved into routine takes from me to return to me to recede

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Tyler Morse called us from Brooklyn, NY.

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[voicemailpoems]

I circled your bed at midnight chanting love me, then made your silence my poison & died

died & still didn't have you in the brief, bitter afterlife that ensued

imagine this wasn't a dream

would you wake up and wade to sea with my soul?

would you remember me?

broken boat witch with no coven & no spell book

voyeur at your bedside glaring?

cast a shadow over your name and let me live there

consummate our love posthumously

throw a net over my apparition - I'd do anything not to fall, unheld

swim back to the shore alone, boat with no oar

save a jilted ghost with waves for a dress,

dead but still desperate for your affection

the waves change course

you wake up with my name seated at its throne, your tongue which is to say you are home now i will no longer beg for what is mine

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Nkateko Masinga called us from Pretoria, South Africa.

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[voicemailpoems]

your face is a silent confessional

hair an evolving demarcation of time, so easily broken by the unkind curve of your brow

Who sowed your eyes with that disapproval? Is it the same one who put that curve in your nose?

Or is that the nose

of the warmer months not wasted? a four wheeled slip a skidmark of blood you could afford to lose.

the hint of freckles on your cheek, Do they darken in the sun? the single pimple that clings to your bare chin, painful signal of youth so heavy in your veins

Have you ever seen your father cry? Do you volunteer to be designated driver, preferring the responsibility of love? Will you fall asleep tonight beneath an undecorated wall still unwilling to recognize the uncomfortable darkness that has been making a broken home of your skull? Does your sister know just how much you miss her?

the last person to kiss your dry and downward sloping lips, Did you beg them to swallow your heart only to realize you couldn’t get it back?

when you look at me with mahogany altar eyes What do you see?

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Katbug called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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[voicemailpoems]

Every femme i’ve ever danced with laces in between the gaps of my teeth. glazing hands with nervous loving down my sculpted back. pressing a memory stain into it lavender and full, moving together while Etta sings At Last each note, the breaths we take between our pelvis.

This is a heaven without cis men.

Femme sternum a stone house drowning out the gunshots with heartbeats pulsing louder together. femme cups my shoulder blades with both palms. plants head full of spirals on my shoulder we sway, become river waking from needed rest queue Ella Fitzgerald’s Cheek to Cheek que Meshell Ndgeocello’s Beautiful this dance make gravity waltz around my lips. Imagination stretched and held up, glimmering. this joy real. this joy undo the trauma unraveling us. this joy births a world without unready caskets this joy is a cataclysm gutted raw, an open door, finally. this joy lives without asking que Floetry, Thundercaat on bass guitar. que freedom in real time. que rebellion, with a frame, drenched in queer sweat. que diana ross’s Im coming out cunty vogue hands and duck walks. a dance floor be romance, resistance and refuge because here i know that I love and that i am loved and that i am black, queer, femme and alive and everyone around me the baddest bitch

and this is a heaven without cis men.

and church is where 2 or more to gather to praise so i make an alter at the feet of every femme i’ve ever melted into for our resilience an asterism of queerness irreverent heartbeats, meteor showers, offering.

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Shanel Edwards called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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[voicemailpoems]

dear icarus: this likeness scares me. where do you begin inside of me? what part of me carries your weary eyes and dripping wax wings? where do i place your desire? in between the shoulderblades? or inside the indent of the clavicle? you and i. desperate to prove our strength. we are climbing the blue-blind sky. suddenly the sun moves. and i think, what if we are consumed by the supernova of your hubris? our lives lay out in both directions. in times of uncertainty i remember your laughter. raising two black girls became something like a magic trick, for you. the rabbit was always in your hat, except her fur was black as coal. we never wondered how or why you kept your tricks up. i remember when you came home. it was christmas eve; you shattered a champagne glass on the seat of the piano. the night snapped black and white. red wine fell from your lips in heavy drops. we were all grown women, then, circling you with eyes that sliced the windows out of wood. fly away, we said. when will your caked-white wings melt into the ocean? we asked. you are nestled in your endless searching. you are somehow carried through the wind. i hope that the sun is there, waiting for you, ready and willing to peel the wax from the small of your back. and what will you see once you finally get to the top of the world?

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Taylor Alyson Lewis called us from Atlanta, GA.

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[voicemailpoems]

a boy is playing his guitar his mum is singing to its rhythms pretending she isn't dying soon

the cloud is eating up the sun swallowing the day off our lives & we call it sunset

believe me love is perishable I know this because my mother is dead

so here is a body with no flesh a mouth with no songs another forest with no trees

grandma said sometimes the smokes keep flying long after the fire's dead

my baby says she wants to love me like mother did I say no

don't bother to mother me I do not want to watch another mother vanish, becoming tear gas in the eyes of grief

I do not want to knock and remember no one is there, anymore I do not want to make a museum out of your name

this pain is fat enough to not need any more calories

if, only, you'd be my tears if you'd be my tears I'll be too afraid to let you flow out freely like this like this . . .

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Trust Tonji called us from Republic of Benin.

More about Trust Tonji.

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[voicemailpoems]

All day, I’ve been trying to discern the nature of my relationship with silence

Whether it’s romance, rescue or abduction

Lovers, a plausible plot

Savior & saved, sure

But who’d want me as their hostage?

Certainly not death, who appeared before me years ago that night as the bouncer at Gigi’s: cross-armed, big & glossy with sweat in his black leather, guarding the hell’s gate to the kind of thrill that I, at nineteen, was dying to be part of

Death darted just one glance at my bird-boned body & laughed as if his voice was made of leather

the way my beautiful ex laughed the evening he grew his wings back & flew off into the snowy dusk

Now the snow is touching all the trees in Michigan again just like that evening

Across the suburbs of America, lights come on like eyes opening for the first time

Think of his laughter—the silver of its wind chime

Then think of the glistening hole between my lungs, which I’ve learned—over the years—to trick myself into believing is hunger, opening the pantry when I know there’s nothing inside but the exhaustion of meal moths

Outside, the sun is setting like an impossible wound

I fly into it with my eyes open knowing there’s nothing this radiant that won’t heal

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Gavin Yuan Gao called us from Brisbane, Australia.

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[voicemailpoems]

There was the year I kept forgetting how old I was And what to do with my mouth

I climb into the fridge a blue hole The girl I kiss holds my hair in her fingers

She walks behind me I don’t watch her face She holds my ribs in her sharp hands like music

His fist held my wrist like creation I wanted to puke but did not

Some girls get so sweet when they’re drunk I yell into the phone like my father

I looked like him when i was first born Black hair slick with the gel of placenta

I used to think there was lots of grey area I used to make a list of pros and cons

The bruises on my body look mean I take a picture of my tits in the mirror

I told this one ex about what had happened He talked about girls who used to reject him

He said it’s like we have opposite problems It’s not like that I still let him cry

This is about to be the hottest picture ever Can sex please be a really good joke

We can laugh at our sorrow like candy We can roll it tight into a bill we can breathe

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Erika Walsh called us from New York, NY.

More about Erika Walsh.

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