Make medim-witted. Oneof those days whereI can’t bare it—the humof madness. My belly wreakinghavoc up and down my spine,intestines in a knot.Garlic! Disgusting! or maybeyou called it gross & I called itget me out of here.A different morning: I’m spinningsex between my fingers.Cavorting with an old pillowcase hoping you’ll come alongand lift my top.…

It's a bus stop in South AmericaAnd crossing five lanes of trafficAt ten in the morning.It's quiet, More than we were expecting.The taxi is late for arrival and I am thankful for every second.It's not knowing the languageAnd our tensions so high,A tennis court in my chest.Love was being rewritten in my headYou were becoming the epitome of sacrifice…

This is what you are missing Melissa – dust turned to waves in the desert – okra coming up two monthstoo late – a forward-breaking gate openinginto someone else’s field – I walk bya window and I don’t understand how little I seeyou – but so clearly the wasp backing outof a hole inside a long-deadtree – when we were children we lived with our grandp…

There are few mornings like this –When the tumble day slowsand the sweltering July heat subsides;when memories of last night’s fire showresonate with a still-first sense of wonder.The footfall of Fatherhood feels fine underneath;I am comfortable here, at peace with astirring that has often lingered in the quiet process of thinking.My daughter turns…

barking up the right treesstuck on the double branch don’t climb if you can’t get down if you can’t get down better learn to jump the kids are so back vlog squad with baby teeth sucking back cinnamon getting pantsed by their dads tamogotchi death hits all seven stages and everyone knows that the moon is made of cheesethat green eggs go great on a h…

The leaving was such that each applein the orchard glassed over into ghost-formon a single night. Centers rotted, dropped out,only translucent orbs at the end of wooded knots remained.A buck arrives, noses them to the ground.His only want: to hear the shatter. First my grandmother,then my brother. A permanent Autumn settles across my face.Brinks be…

I’m waiting for the tram, picking plums but really what I’m doing is looking, longingly higher up where most of the fruit is sitting ripe.A man approaches — bald but for a crown of white hair, lightweight vest, faded tattoosof an old sailor, two breasty mermaids with red lips.Do you want me to pull down the branch, he asks and I say yes please than…

In front of the laundromat a cigarette grows out of stub and ash, smoke seeps from lungs back into sticky-dry tobacco, red hot cherry backs away from filter, reshapes as fire, jets back into bic lighter, gas condenses into fluid.Came back unsmoked to haunt our past selves down. Almost a room in the outskirts, we write each other out. Eyes like wild…

Begins with texts to my best friend.Do you want to hear my revenge fantasy?Let’s get iced coffee and be brats.Learned helplessness is a crime.Success is an art. I’m working on my MFA.That’s deeply stupid. I’m reviewing my life choices in this Greek restaurant.Not everyone needs to be a Very Interesting Person.Who needs a human man? Shadow Daddies e…

I am not mentally okay. I thought of you, or more specifically,I thought this would be something you'd enjoy. This is some news you need to hear. Here is some free therapy that I heard.This made me cry. Watch this cute animal & forget how the world is falling apart. I'm not mentally okay but I cannot say that to you so instead I hide the things I c…

I felt like masturbatingI felt like cryingIt was the twenty-first centuryAlreadyA quarter overThere had been artistic movements& warsMy debts had been repackagedCountless timesThe enemy of my enemyFollowed meOn Twitter, now calledEx-Marines shot themselves in the head in their aunts’ basementsWe lost touch almost as a wholeCategoryWe listened to mu…

Aishvarya Arora called us from Queens, NY.voicemailpoems.org/submit/facebook.com/voicemailpoemstwitter.com/voicemailpoemsinstagram.com/voicemailpoemsAv VOICEMAIL POEMS

He gave up looking for a town, gas station, or house off a road or driveway The desert unfolded further than his eyes could see. In the stillness, the ground spread in glare, broken only by shrubs now and then. A swell of dunes lay below a jut of mountain range bulking up from beneath the surface. They were told it could take hours to traverse this…

To hate yourself and have sexmakes you a movie director on a street corner, seeingeverything in slow motion, scouting for bodies. When it’s too dark to see we clock out to edit more. After work, every night becomes dance. Re-cuts of thighs and light shows.A supercut is a cheap haircut, not filmmaking technique. But I know montage because I put move…

The cut on my ankle bleeds into the shape of an exclamation pointYou speak and it comes out ornateswirling, as if from an an ancient book I’m trying to follow those letterswhich are, inevitably, words, through the tall yellow grasses at the edge of the lagoon where your charm bracelet lays splayed in the sand and my nose disappears into the blue Le…

How their branches seem to extend without burden in the lengthening light, their star-shaped leaves of deepest burgundy, weightless, more form than texture, surrendering to autumn air in such a way that it’s difficult to discern where leaf-tip ends and shade begins; until, wind-jostled, they flutter like wisps of cordovan dust out into a blue expan…

I hope all my books are banned books, like, so contraband they start trappin’ them out the bando—people fiendin’ for my words with such fervorclawing at the door for just one more taste someone keeps the lookout to make sure twelve don’t see the weight:tiny baggies filled with poem scraps pushed out from every corner I hope my books become so obscu…

as silent and holy as an empty church. a polished row of pews. you, moonin the sky, how do you do it? your one-handed gravityholding 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 sledgehammeronce smashed through our o…

remember bodies at night how they glow how they bend into us like refracted lightthe memory of where a body was after it has left its phosphorescenceyou cocoon into the spaces around thingsfind yourself in auburn eyes and hazel skin the red that flows from youyou learn that aloneness is a softness a sky that pulls you throughyou see bodies as they …

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…

In the palm of my hand I harborFault lines, one-way streets,A famous bridge half-crossed andAnother I steered from the passenger’s seatWhile the driver smoked weedSuch honking dreams in the patchouli, Of frolicking unhindered, ofSlapping my feet in my Sunday shoesDown my aunt’s hardwood hallway.The earthquakes always come.I’ve cracked off into the …

A man in a powder blue suitoffered to tell me my futureon Olive Avenue. When I tried to say no, he said Baby, please,in a way that told me that he might know something thatI didn’t, so I held out my palm.I used to hold out the same palmon the playground for other girlsto read. They would tell me that I was destined to have five kidsand a loving hus…

I stay in bed til 2 then get up and open all the windows. Make coffee and walk aroundthe 5 x 10 space I call my living room. Turn my attention to the postcardsand photographs on the fridge. Stare hard at all that evidence. Whisper: See, there’s no reason to be lonely.Smoke one cigarette and then anotheron the steps out front. Begin to cry over my o…

I.I fall in love every time I fly.Leaving Dallas: the medical student wearing headphones and a full headscarf just to forget her be-planed predicament.Above Tucson: the sorority sister with the strawberry hair whose father is waiting at the baggage claim; they leave, arms over shoulders over arms.In Denver. The woman in security: her bright eyes co…

When are you going to move closer?The space aches between us.It invents its own language.The jagged edge of the ocean paints the sand dark,retreats into its own swollen urge, arcs forward to tease the shore with the inexorableinevitable that drives my hands into the unwritten darkto pull the tide of you over me.Drown me,roll me against you.Make me …

Sons blushed and became soft peaches in the hot backseats of cars, never even wanted the front seat. Or, I was the son, but it’s niceto be plural and grand and count the dandelions in right field as friends, which I picked in the ancient way of boys who’s fathers tried to metaphoricallylight fires under their asses, there I go again, I was the boy,…

When you’re out in the sticks - the woods are a fortress - sunlight stabs down at you in bright daggers - I bet no one told you how a canopy is like armor.I had a place in the woods where rules couldn’t touch me - little warrior boy with sticks beating up all the full grown men that ever left mama broken.On the ground with a jar of bugs - benevolen…

I feel as if I should tell youThat I have never yet, seen -A Beaver in the Wild/but have, for sure seen plenty things:-Too many a shrub and quail, -Elk drunk at the Waterfall, -Horses arrogant in the sun-So many a video of Fruit Bats gnawing on…Fruits.-So many dams Made by clawed hands, or less clawed hands.I still strong-arm the river at the diaph…

1. Trigger happy target 2. Archangel of the burnt and bruised 3. Newport ash on a papi store floor4. Pants way passed where his mama taught 5. It’s my car sir6. Ocean front scalp 7. Jesus in hiding 8. Unintentional vaudeville show 9. Fireflies in his palms 10. A friend’s blood 11. Tomorrow’s bedside prayer 12. Tonight’s prime time special 13. It’s …

Sometimes I wish I could stop you from talking when I hear the silly things you sayAlison, I know this world is killing youOh Alison, my aim is true - Elvis Costello, “Alison” I was named for a catcall strung out into three verses and a chorus Ballad drowning in mystery fansites say she’s a pretty stranger his eye caughtat the grocery store maybe a…

A few years ago a machine peaked into my head and found a section dead.Most likely from a lack of oxygen in utero, but really, that’s speculation – what’s done is doneand there’s no undoing it. Like when I was eighteen andsomeone pilfered the contents of my lingerie drawer.They took it all: the see-through, the satin, the blood-spotted cotton panti…

For Owen Steinmann (2016-2017)Sugars trickle from maples’ taut trunks, sappingsummer energy, the crystallized light of wanting to stay alive. But what melody the drops make a manfrom a pulpit always says as they leap out the spout, percuss the bucket’s galvanized bottom. Yes, such sweetvasculature and saccharine, this living always toward death. He…

I finally want to talk about it has taken me a decade more than most and all my wisdom teeth have fallen victim by now there is a draft buried beneath this you will never know of a pleasure of released dioxide and simile I don’t write because the block asks I do this out of an empathy for myself, a backlog of tears and this body knows that the deal…

…july.wilted cereal in a bowl / wedrown in brown boiling milk. the haze of sparklers and fire- works add to the deafening heat that drips intoaugust.caged in by smog,air smells of cigarettes and melted tar. surely this place is meant to ignite.september,when he arrives,he thinks this is a flat plain, where desert dirt covers everything like snowand…

The eyes have it: weight, such that they can’t even roll.This is one of those moments when I should probably listento my body but you know how it goes when someone talks too much for your taste (coffee, sir?). There’s lots of work to do today. There’s money to be had and even more easily lost like a sensible child to the pursuit of higher learning …

brilliant elixer fuck me upfuck me deadwhy doesacademia hate me i’m ready tosacrifice my bodyto a careersomething boring liketeaching teenagerswhy romeo and juliet did ordidn’t die make mygrandparents proudof me againi pour this into my glass andpour my glass intothe bathtub full ofrejection letters thatcall me ‘jessica’ instead of jessiethis is th…

I was on my back that morningstanding still & runninghalf-turned, fetal &spread eagle & curled up along the edgeof the hospital bedand the doctor says“It’s time,” & I already know becauseit has always beentime, time to push & sheis explaining to mehow to push, how to undulate you from my body& as she explainsI bring my chin to my chesteven though m…

Our hosts Logen Cure and I.S. Jones review their favs from our Winter 2018 issue!(Get caught up on Winter 2018 here: soundcloud.com/voicemailpoems/sets/voicemail-poems-fall-2017)This installment features poems by:Kirwyn Sutherlandhttps://soundcloud.com/voicemailpoems/taunts-to-the-klan-by-kirwyn-sutherlandzach blackwoodhttps://soundcloud.com/voicem…

Another storm has the neighbors' chickensall lumped together and subdued, soI can't hear them from my attic room.Rain has thrown itselffor days against the roof."What is the cruelest month?" people ask.Last year I watched a manput one poor frozen birdin a garbage bag at the end of winter;it had been stuck in a corner of the coop.That's what Spring …

End of the year gray. AnchorsWhere balloons should be, or: Could peace wait on the outerBank of sane. How in the holidayBuzz to say nothing for clear, that is:Give me back remembering,Its attendant costumed sting. The portraiture made overkillBy rain. No incoming. The quantumState the same. The slide to black,The self-quilled quell to loveThe heart…

i.In the other world, everything smells like cherries.Every phone call is the news of someone's death,and every cigarette is candy. In the other world, you tell me you do not love me every day, and ourbed is made from cedar trees. The horses run rider-less and frightened, chased by men with bottles forweapons and collarbones made of ice. The plains…

Part 1: UntitledIt was yesterday or something, when I heard the song playing in a store, askingdo I make myself a blessing to everyone I meet?I don't sing it to myself, exactly, but I do repeat it, metallic gyre, all the day long. In the at-home lab of an electrical engineer,I was surrounded by metallic gyres (not an industry term,)tiny spools of w…

The town knows about darkness, the slithered purple that comes on the land when rotation hides the sun.Something gathered, slow and heavy and electric, almost as though the town knows evil is coming, and its shape.From here we can't see spots on the sun. We know where the roads go and where, how the ground lies.The town has us because we know it, a…

we're crying in a costco parking lot fiending for that intimacy we once feltbecause every so often we lose it andthen i get depressed when i think you deserve much better sometimes i think i deserve better too most of the time it feels like i am already holding all the good that's out therelarge and fragile in my arms i hold on for dear lifethe wom…

the ammonite an index of suturesi got tired of cataloging themhermetically sealing little traumasafraid they'd get to know one another go boomlittle mother catastrophes insteadi smashed little rocks to bits in a ditcheach shard a memory released pressurefrom stomach the common burial groundthe cavity of accumulationeach little box coated in dust an…

He had created a type of 3d paint,was one of the first things he told us. As we followed him upstairs to his plantfilled apartment, we decided he was lying.It wasn't long until he told us about Mexico;kidnapped by cartels, held hostage for weeks,his father and grandfather were mercenariesin the French Foreign Legion.He introduced us to his three pa…

"when you see a mountain coming,get out of it's way."my uncle, six-two and oxentold me after clipping my wing.i learn at an early ageto be a black manis to see a black manand fear his size, momentum.to love a black man is to seehis shape and surrender.i lay myself downon his threshing floorsay uncle,and await apocalypseacross my arms. when two gods…

My mother calls them phases and maybethat's an accurate representation becausethey're lunar, edges of something, the kindof scrambling you do drunk in the dark.It's a lot of being drunk in the dark.I'm dying to discover myself and finallybe cool. I'm smoking. I'm smoking hot.I'm a smoking gun. I went out one nightand suffered through talking becaus…

All soldiers believe Charms in their MREs are foul luck, bad juju,more than just a dark talisman, a virtual death sentence.Patrols have been called off if some dirtbag privatestraight out of basictested fate by peeling open a pack of the generic Jolly Ranchers knockoffs that bring nothing but doom.Everyone on the FOB heard stories about how Charmsw…

my head is full of blood steamed like latte foampressing open the seams in my skull, burning through folds in my brain like a shot luge.my head is the generating station in the delaware river,developed into luxury condos with beds that fill the whole homes.my head is a smoking suite with smoke stains inthe corners of the ceilings and the ice cubes …