VOICEMAIL POEMS - Spring 2023

VOICEMAIL POEMS - Summer 2023

VOICEMAIL POEMS - Fall 2023

VOICEMAIL POEMS - Winter 2024

VOICEMAIL POEMS - Summer 2025

The man at the hardware store 
asks me what I’m looking for.
Oh me? I’m not looking for anything. 
My friend is looking for a spigot…
but he’s not my friend. 
He’s a sunflower. He’s Jesus 
with a tiny braid, mask strap 
mashing down his hair 
and his big ears, a tape 
measure in his back pocket, 
a denim jacket, and a backpack 
full of clementines. 

From the beginning I’ve said I’m no good 
at the physical world. I am only good 
at words—recognizing the pizza place 
meant wood-fired or handcrafted 
and not wood-crafted, that enchiladas before noon 
are brunchiladas, and that if I take a bath 
with this man we’re bath buddies. 
Not fuck buddies, not buddy-buddies, 
not friends with benefits. Not necessarily 
lovers, or people who need a single thing 
from one another—just two tender humans 
descending into water.

————————————–

Julia C. Alter called us from Burlington, VT.

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"Land Legs" by Julia C. Alter

it is summer in the poem and we are living
three of us, in some family apartment
on the fourth floor perhaps sixth

every day, the hiss of onions
in the pan, and the pasta
always has beans in it

stacked on top of one another
	/another
	/another
we can’t reach the ceiling
and the doorknobs
keep falling off

at night on the balcony:
your moonmouth on my neck
you tell me another new thing
the plants half crispy around us

I know nothing really
belongs to me, but somehow
I have arrived in this moment like a tourist
in my own life 

where having an opinion is terrifying
and exhilarating/	means having
to surrender to my own publicness

I want to beetle on my back
with my legs up in the air
I want to grow wings and buzz
in circles around the ceiling

I want to melt across your lap
and her lap
and hers, with
my top off in some dewy bedroom,
the windows open, and I am saying
yes yes yes until I have nothing
left to say

I love every minute of this stupid life

of loving and not knowing
or caring where
to draw the line

of getting really good at something
and letting everybody watch

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Hannah Karpinski called us from Montreal, Quebec.

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"June Bug" by Hannah Karpinski

for coming forth into the day
after sappho

when sleeping through the night traps their eyes             i let the cooling mist of my breath
  flash knives       across their lids       hewing the twine and twist of night bark

my lips are anubis

a blue bowl of oil to catch the fruitful    mud   of    holydreams

we are housebound             putrefying knots of flesh
     yawning    utterances     while hook worms    moss    our    livers

there is so much life in the decaying
                                          i have come for all of it
          
we find baba in the marsh
      riddled with reedy arrows     the nibbling plumes
turning a clod of dirt      to godstuff

do not stir the gravel
i am sound and it is sound

i am possessed in the tumult of storm
   made thorn apple embryo      poison   and   medicine

                                                        there are plunderers at the breast of heaven

    		 once   i was trapped in a stairwell by a butcher
                    		as he cleaved me    pomegranate jewels    spilling   down   steps
i crocodiled      devouring    us    both

   if you have henna on your hands          baba will not eat what you cook

my neck is isis

 under the tendrils’ shade
we hold a hope for restoration by rose
        lichen     moss     and bee song

   			  pressing my lips to hers     i find her    skull much smaller 
than i imagined    my fingers a delicate     wreath embroidering her hair

              startled by a child’s affection    the five downy ducklings 
     leap   from   the   roof   before   they   know   flight
breaking an opening   into the sky

  over the     lapis      years      of      loving      you
from a single fruit to a grove of towering date palms   my worries have grow

            a phone is put to the ear of my cousin hours before 
his death           his breath a worn out husk rattling back to my goodbye

circumstellar            this boundless body

     my tumor is a murmuration of starlings
             shielding me with their sweep and swoop

no part is without a god

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Donia Salem Harhoor called us from Princeton Junction, NJ.

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"For Coming Forth Into The Day" by Donia Salem Harhoor

Once, there was a girl who became 
woman too fast, went peroxide blonde 
in a kitchen sink, kissed lipstick red 
across the collarbones of every man 
in Los Angeles. No one ever asked 
for this: draft of the script 
where Norma Jean undoes herself, ear 
pressed to the phone, listening for a sign. 
Enter the smiling mortician & how
can you cut into something silk-woven, 
so soft to the touch? We all wanted our own slice 
of flesh, amber bottle of barbiturates. Not 
your baby, but everybody’s. The whole world’s girl, 
dead & dead & dead again. It’s all makebelieve, 
isn’t it? Dream a little dream of me. 
The Brentwood house burns, the Birthday Dress 
is torn, & the Director says victim—
says you were bleach in high heels, 
a nothing in black-and-white. Oh, please 
don’t go—we’ll eat you up, 
we love you so.

————————————–

Lauren Badillo Milici called us from Royal Oak, MI.

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"Artist's Depiction Of Marilyn Monroe Crying" by Lauren Badillo Milici

When we find the porpoise, I have so much to tell you. How animals are queer. How for me, sex is everything. And how the details, like whales dying with genitals extending into the great blue sea, will be of use to you in the future. My scientist, my party-goer. I hear now that kids aren’t having sex. I get it, the apocalypse is slower than expected, dull even. Still, on the last day of the year we meander the mating grounds for harbor seals and sea birds, a place that life thrashes. We are a part of it. Then, out in the open, a body. The head and tail intact, the skin the texture of wet rubber, the midsection red and bright. The color of inside; pink meat, only a gleam of ribcage flashing white in the sun. There are no flies, no smell. We pry its mouth open with a piece of driftwood. There is a tongue, soft rows of perfectly neat teeth. Half the skull is visible, bulbous. We circle and circle. It is the last day of December, the sun is setting, we are alone on the beach with the smallest cetacean at our feet. I want this creature to tell you everything that I can’t; how one day I will be dead, and I hope that you have lived a joyous life of thrashing.

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Kelly Gray called us from Camp Meeker, CA.

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"A Note on Sex and Death on the Beach" by Kelly Gray

the first boy who doesn’t love me back laughs himself across the bridge and tells me to hold my breath.  he holds my elbow as i step up onto his skateboard and i tell him i must look stupid for trying. the park benches are all green and empty. he does not understand because he is not afraid of looking. he tells me all he can see and it is covered in tired, shimmering dust. he grins for anything at all, even falling. 

in fall, he lends me his favorite book. i softly hold the pages instead of dog-earing them. i finish it in one sitting and bring it back to him the next day with my bookmark still inside. he brings out rain-splotched tarot cards and tells me to pick one. he and i fall asleep on my couch in my farmhouse watching Downtown Abbey. he takes me on a hike and i can only remember how sweaty his hands were and that he calls me lucky.

i ask him to go to the winter ball with me and he tells me he has visual snow. i do not know what this means and he smiles because he knows. he wears a tacky gray sweater over his button-up that says he does not know what he is doing here. it has a logo but no letters. i am a guiding shadow next to him.

i slip his fingers underneath the wrists of my black sleeves and tell him to move instead of dance. when the music starts to make him sick and the colored lights start to change too quickly, we leave through the back of the cafeteria. it is a quarter ‘till the sky is all green and empty. i want to kiss him and he smiles because he knows, but i never do.

standing at the edge of the river, wide-mouthed and joyful and alive, i remember the rocks he pulled me across several miles down. i watch him glow and my lips buzz with closed questions in the night. he asks me if i can imagine tv static falling from my eyelashes. i tell him i can often not imagine anything at all.

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Allen Means called us from Boulder, CO.

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"Colorado" by Allen Means

‘cause i need you pt. 4: the roots

soundtrack: eve, the roots

& is this turning 
back time never heard
it resurrect dry wilted 
fresh rain tender stream 
sunlight thaws cold 
can you feel it 
warm brush lips warm
kiss every numb away
you roughed eve out of wonder
dulled splendour
keep saying dull but how else can i say
you said it best 
let me fuck with it
a most tender instrument
shaped through desire legible 
lower lower
i thought i loved someone once
it felt like eve
the roots took out ‘cause i need you
you can’t erase need that easy
though
it runs flow ready like current
steady moving under steady
& that says nothing of what it means
to reminisce study your sound
bring it back moving let’s trace it 
steve spacek made eve
crispy layers already you metabolized
i mean you broke it down & the roots 
made it live instruments
is that ?uest calling out b♭
what restoration repeats this 
prayer like i repeat
listen listen
i thought i loved him once
it felt like eve
but so far i’ve only loved you
& i only keep loving you 
more

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Tina Zafreen Alam called us from Toronto, ON.

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"Cause I Need You Pt 4: The Roots" by Tina Zafreen Alam

Calyx
(after “Housekeeping” by Marilynne Robinson) 

O, make of my teeth. a sieve. 
drink. from this. font of mercy. 
make of my body. a community. 

lips nets. filter all impurity. 
every virus. every bruised silted 
eye. sifted. through. every hurt.

sold. let tears collected. saltcrust. 
make from them. crystalized. calyx. 
tinkering grass. swaying. invisible breeze. 

realized. glazed stalks. bowing. to receive. 
caresses. gentle kiss. on the forehead. 
gentle hand. on the back. gentled. 

fingertips. sepal split. let me reach. up. 
with both fists. & grasp the wind. that 
joy withheld. cast into the sky. for me 

to find. now. to harvest. to harness.
to imbibe. how then. to live. now. 
with such hunger. on the wind. with danger.

fanning out. in every direction. if i could.
lay a table. for four hundred thousand. 
for all of the empty chairs. lost. and we are.

still losing. pushed away. from the table. 
here. i set a place. for every heart. take up all. silver. 
every syringe. gather up. the mercury. every 

fevered thermometer. cobble together. each scalpel. 
open chested. melted into. oneflowingsubstance. 
pressed. then cooled. into utensils. for our feast.

this is one way. we remind our.selves we are. alive. 
we survive. by silver linings. we dine on. & 
even while falling. peeled away. from seats. 

full. too early. it is salt-glinted things. 
that shine us. into understanding. 
we were always. whole. 
 
this is how. i will sing. for you our supper.

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Adrian Dallas Frandle called us from Stratford, CT.

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"Calyx" by Adrian Dallas Frandle

AT THE END OF THE WORLD IS THE WORLD
[After Frank O'Hara's "Having a Coke with You."]

Having fish and chips at lovely’s
Having a leather jacket you’re in a crinkly top
Having a past is not permissible 
That’s why tonight i’m 90s ethan hawke
Having a diet coke explaining the past to my friend 
Our past involves all the same people but in different accounts
Maybe they treated me differently cause i’m ethan hawke:
A composite of white male longing 
You think this hawke stuff is toxic, and say
A culture of individualism leads to paranoia
Worrying about being canceled is an indulgence
We raise our drinks to the angelic choir of haters
Having a coked-up convo I miss that
You can go back you can never return, is that what they say
Snapped from the gates of dysfunctional heaven
At the lesbian bar we will not get a table
From where we stand it looks like straight people in vests
These days I leave early to go write abt what a great time I had
And you are the love of my life and have no spatial awareness
You piss the whole street off
Standing everywhere like a tree without its glasses 
Your top still crinkling
It’s perfection

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Scout Faller called us from San Francisco, CA.

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"At The End Of The World Is The World" by Scout Faller

it’s, I want to say, totalising,     like
grief is a totalising force - 
                                                   that sounds, 
like a sentence, doesn’t it?
                                    Like something 
other people could nod at, 
                   clasp my hand
but i’m not          sure i know
         what totalising is 
even meant to mean, what 
total? like this 
             is the sum total of my experience,
                   or i have become whole, reached
a total, under the 
           -ising’s hand?        i’ve described trees
                                                                                                        totalled by the wind, bent over, flattened,
               ripped out of the earth
                      which held them, and I suppose
                      it is like that. Or maybe it’s not
                                 so metaphorical,        like this is totally
the worst i have ever felt will ever feel like
       in my dreams i total the remnants           she leaves
                            in my subconscious, in therapy too, like the total
                               of all my afters will be less 
than any of my befores,              in Latin we call this a terminus
                              ante quem and a terminus 
                 post quem, a point
        before and after which, like pre and post noon,
everything      defined in relation to 
                                                         everything      else, 
                                                         everything      in deference
                                                                                    to that highest point, the great eyeball
of the day boring through 
                                         any weather; it has the sense
                                                     of decimating, another Latin word, 
                                   which originally possessed
                                the particular force of killing
                               one men in every ten
     in the legion, 
at the hands of their own commanders, 
                                                                drawing the lots, 
                          no acts of God,              though time
                                  and distance have changed
         that too,                slopping over the
                        sense, holding tight
                                          in its core the fact of fear
                                and of bad, it feels bad
stop asking me questions

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Murdo Homewood called us from Edinburgh, Scotland.

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"And How Does That Make You Feel?" by Murdo Homewood

Text your glamorous friend 
in their better city something
incriminating and selfish. 
Buy a vibrator with your
royalties. Prefer men
to landscapes. Listen
to that Joni Mitchell record
with the big scratch
on the B side. Live inside
the scratch. Feel 
like everyone who loves 
you is a better person 
than you. Try to sink.
Try to drain. Get your
ass grabbed. Spool
apart like honey
in a homemade 
centrifuge. Wrestle
your sister to the ground
until the neighbors
call the cops. Stay
home from the house
party. Spend your 
birthday hangover
looking for the naked guy
with the infected lotus
tattoo. Find him
strung out under 
your roommate’s mom’s
crocheted quilt 
on the living room 
floor. See the same band
fifteen times. Wear 
your friend’s slip dress. 
Snort ketamine off 
her fist. Laugh when 
someone who saw your
tits ten years ago says
he’ll miss them. Remember
that a fluke is a worm 
or the man who was killed 
by a deer that ran 
through the plate 
glass door of the bus 
he was driving and kicked 
him to death in his 
seatbelt. Be told you 
will forget everything.
Remember it
anyway. Become
angelic in your 
hospital bed. Feel
left out when the hawks 
circling you speak
to each other. Return
to your body like a wasp 
into the vinegar trap. 
Learn to love this,
the only thing you’ll
own forever.

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Gion Davis called us from Denver, CO.

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"How To Be A Wildfire (If Conditions Are Better To Be A Man)" by Gion Davis

to use words with ex- like
explicitly reference exploitation
extreme inequity and no-longer-
acceptable excuses / to demand
more than delegated dash of
confectioner’s sugar.
 
expected: accept
baseline bare minimum
w/ groveling & gratitude
as if persistence of have-nots is
burden enough (eyesore & horror).
 
in this place now remiss re: asylum,
immigrants less weary-welcomed
more stealing & suspicious, strain
on nominal, derelict infrastructure,
“no speak english” is outlawed
sleeping giant insurgency.
 
this Land was never yours
wealth isn’t meant to hoard:
billionaires exist by injurious
labor practice & tax systems
porous w/ loopholes meant to treat
corporations as deity & despot.
 
this trap is nuanced, multiplicitous
& unforgiving finishing school
exposed as affective means of control,

I come from generations 
of head down + hush up
this great & we escaped
fate much worse, pray 
for roots deep enough 
for the flooding
 
but there is flourish in the overflow,
unexpected irrigation:
 
aggravate – push – tension

we’re done w/ polite-ask
smile small hand-to-chest
now teeth show, bite back
strike-ready, unrest

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Lucia Herrmann Benítez called us from San Diego, CA.

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"Gauche" by Lucia Herrmann Benitez

Beyoncé as Final Girl 
	after Morgan Parker

Say it were true,
the tendrils match the roots.
How much, then, would you really love me? 
If you wake up in skin
like this. 
Let the world know how I saved you
with soft hands and hips made for bearing. 
Dreamgirl effigy spangled 
across your America.
Tethered to this un-American way of being
amniotic by force 
of habit. I’ve touched the fringes of the matrix. 
So believe me when I say the way I see it, is the way it is,
and this is the most probable outcome. Tonight,
I scroll up on memes about the end of the world while I dye
my roots back from honey blonde.
Google “How to calm your parasympathetic nervous system”
after gazing into the fate of my palm. Fickle,
you believe everything to be a sign from god 
or the universe.
I am running out of time.
The finale is unrelenting.
Give me hell, come high water.
I am still alive.
Listen, 
listen,
listen,
I’ve been thinking of going back to church.

————————————–

Jasmine Knowles called us from Merrillville, IN.

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"Beyoncé As Final Girl" by Jasmine Knowles

the bristled faces
of sunflowers droop
in the neighbor’s yard
& from your upstairs apartment
we break the stalk
of our engagement

another season
of raising the sun 
to its full span

another season
of roots buckling
w/ each tackle

the birds bag
their first home game
of the season
& from your window i watch
their shoulders angle from
love’s perpetual scrimmage

laid back
like the neighbor’s
sunflower carcass
picked clean of its
teeth innumerable

head bent
in the summer grass
awaiting the cool fade
of the season’s first frost

————————————–

Diandra Williams called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"Autumn 2023" by Diandra Williams

we gleamed that prom night like lit lightning bugs flossy something sincere our mamas gruffed up and flummoxed about wingtip shoes, and us carrying on with girls like they were boys. no small joys, despite the knowledge that we were headed to disparate camps which would teach us how to better be—we danced that night, you and me, like we had the right and nerve to insist upon one last solstice of far flung freedoms. all of us clambering for a little something sweet but feigning sour in the moonlight; something dour in the limelight. we liked to cosplay like we some eastside niggas, all puffed up and out but we still wet behind the ears so i know you finna blush when you read the poems i wrote about you. i never forgot the summer you told me you’d take me out to the country and fry me up some field snakes, or the way he never knew he wasn’t blood but kinfolk just the same. how could i have foreseen the way our fireside chats would take us coast to coast, lyin’ to ourselves in every city, thinking we could shake these listless, bogged down, half-baked, pre-stretched personas? i’m your biggest fan but you treat me like your biggest opp. at least i ain’t no damn cop, and you left the marine corps with nothing but a few scratches. i thank god or whoever’s out there for my baby boys, and the way i know how to code switch but fight the instinct every chance i get. maybe this fancy paper won’t make me a real nigga but i can use it to keep us safe, you and me. i love you like how daddies supposed to love their first-born sons and i don’t like to look at that too close. i love me like how mamas supposed to hate their daughters and i can’t look away. i wouldn’t change how it happened for anything though. i’m just saying.

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Kelsey L. Smoot called us from Atlanta, GA.

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"After Sula" by Kelsey L. Smoot

RedBlack Mana, Rakdos. Desire is impossible: It destroys its object. We’re cursed by my clone of yer demon: I cannot win and you cannot lose, but that curse applies to yous, too; Can’t always wins.

stooling brain. drooling grain. ring-finger throbbed b’yond its bandied vow   fill the space, vacuity in perpetuity    delicious and whelming just-so mirage, as if by mirror. approach me in equal, inevitable stride   as if by mirror. as if right here, sucking tailpipe entropy in the closed garage 

illmost, raghaggard and hagragged. then a stranger sees my beauty   where the fruity pit would sit were I well   puncturemptied of all that was me, which was always filched from mother, others

let’s say nothing of how easily I befriended “the last male poet” this week on the internet 

If my body was a city it would not be settled densely. but still it would be hard to hide a body in it

duty doesn’t rust so ez out here, arid as it is   that’s an Atlantic luxury   & who doesn’t have 50 daughters these days as Danaus did, every a one of them trans, in perf, like-new nick?

spading the hardwon white at the end of my thumbnail in, to then gust the eye gunk from dog Bacchus’ punctum, its immediate suburbs. oh, now he wants it, liplicks. Bacchus eyeing the slate sandwich board that is me, wondering: what’s da goop du jour?

fully furnished furnace, 1400/week, no utilities but very warm in the winter. off like a herd of turtles. arbor-borne coralcore, moremost more. grasslawn gore, well cap puking up past birdpeck barerroir.

perv short for pervfect, pervfidious   brainwracking wrangous, laybliss   sanctioned-alternative, CrudLight BudHeavy; indecorous bevy buoybobb on grandparent knee   
as abug, so below    winethin and foaling 
marl (earth) / marlacious 
scapegrace in the throat 

Off like a hurdle’s bride’s brassiere   shattersilk, sheer    crosseyed in pleisure 

gladge with parapharma grin   pair of farm boys, overalls, literal boys   “been farming long?”   gay ex in similar gray pinstripe rail hat   my GP got rid of that novelty photo from his cubby.    in what likelake will my grown cousin and I see our reflections as kin e’eragain   ?

Wettest West Edmonton Doll in the whole wide water park. That yearning, that you hadn’t quit piano lessons as a kid, is like masking:   you can always start again 

fried potatoes hissing and sputtering like shrunk speech from a phone you set down beside the stovetop, forgot to thought about 

cloche clause   marching gland    arch of foot and hip of harp   austere even, which I never get to say these days   ablute, solved ent, alazing in the shallows 

light bulged into the stained glass form, flushing out all the little muscly shapes   soft lead little arteries, light led ‘long them—he’s always known how to draw a back   no a back doesn’t look like that   but look at his shapes 

lathe to the party   bentblade impedimenta   light laid, drawn then

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bonnyCD called us from Indus, AB, Canada.

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"Dreadbore" by bonnyCD

& I still want the impossible.                
                where              the roadway is slickened in snow 
              & bittered with runoff,                    the salt a constellation   of light.
 &    you       have turned into a  saint,     
                             a weapon    of ascension      & bone,     the miracle     turning glass     into water.  
               I   have to stifle    the collapse  of   the  star in my chest  
at   the sound of your voice.                              in the trees,  
              all the birds  are    in their cages.         I’m putting my hands 
                                      through the wires,      pleading for flight,   
 those feathers iridescent        before the fire  &                    I don’t know   
                         where you are  anymore.                                                 
oh,   god.                      I’ve started   taking  pain              like benediction.     
             the birds            sound asleep.         in your wake,          I give apologies without end,        
     spend nights sleepless & repenting.                & I promise
             I am taking           the long way around,    like you asked me to.  
I promise       to pick up the phone          by the second ring       &                 
                                        live like          I   deserve it.       & in this aftermath,     
 where you have turned   angel   & searchlight, 
       gaze cast          beyond my reach,
                 I am still trying           to forget   your heartbeat.         I am at    your altar,      
shrouded in cages, the birds broken out.    I’m    making      my final plea: 
       let my desire           be my only weakness. 
                         let me speak      to you        once more
until my mouth       is void
      of  words.

————————————–

Ivi Hua called us from Washington, USA.

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"CONVERSATION WHERE YOU ARE HOLY" by Ivi Hua

I have a clinical gaze and a 
body like a knife, knife like 
a ragged moon and a man
who yells
GOD BLESS YOU MA’AM PRAY FOR THE UNBORN.
I pray for the born and for
my body to birth something like a sun
(the soft kind). In the heat of winter, 
it claws lit angles around the room
before murmuring into more pleasant shapes,
blanketing the sill with creamy gold.
On a walk, I watch it gently build a crown
in your hair
and I fill it with good thoughts, the way
I empty my head on the road.
Delaware is a flat line and a slow bleed.
I can be light I can be the
sun’s slow breach over bridge,
the kind of bridge that makes you tired
just looking at its great heave over 
water’s greater one and wondering
How sturdy can it be, really?
Where are the bones of this thing?
My clinical gaze is hungry when 
I don’t want it to be,
my hands two snakes on the wheel.
I will them to loosen, to hold the leather 
as one carries an egg, the unborn, or
small paper shapes
translucent with glue, cell wall-thin.
Years from now I will open for you
like a moon,
plain and bright, prayers
swinging through my whole skeleton.

————————————–

Kaleigh Spollen called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"Breach" by Kaleigh Spollen

I spy
Good looks
	in New York


I think
That’s
the sex
I want

(But how to get there?)


	Mysterious
		transit
	between

	States:
(Cars
 == sex?)

Sex
is
logistics?

…Convenience?
 People
 in

my building
 can see
 and hear

 me fuck

because
(I’m on the first floor and)
I don’t
	maintain
	the
		blinds.

	Im not a good “Bowery Bird.”

I’ve learned, 
You have
	to flirt
   with your
		legs
	  & eyes.

  It only
	happens
  a   few
		times

in your life, 
	until
	one year

You figure
  it out.

“I send
 them photos
and that’s all
  they usually
	need.”

My friend Tim  got
a trainer 
		
and lost
	a LOT
	of weight.

  
I drink too much caffeine,

And I shit like a bird.

And
	I CRAVE SNACKS
		Do y’all	crave snacks?
(if they agree– doubt them??)


			CUM -		UNITY.
			I 	WANT TO COME
		BY HABIT, THINK	I’M
		JEALOUS, 	DEVELOPED
	MY WHOLE METHOD-
		SELFISH.
Now I’m like a shellfish--
			PRIMO- GENERATING.
		SPLIT ME IN HALF,
		LICK UP THE VAGUS
	NERVE LIKE A FOOT,
		GROUND HANDS SWARM
		 FOR ATTENTION  
	( fast tap your soles)
	 A BOTTOM’S  GRASP
		CONDESCENDS:
“IF I’M TOO UGLY TO FUCK,
	JUST BEAT ME UP.”

————————————–

Peter Webb called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"Bottom's Up" by Peter Webb

A boy, 
though I should say man, 
from that farm town of future doctors
is training to be one in this city.

He broke the heart of a friend,
another farm town doctor-to-be.
I broke mine on one 
who was his friend, and her friend, 

and once mine.
I was about to say I love you. 
It rattled against my ribs
and as if sensing it

this friend read me 
a Davis story that ended
with heartbreak and an old shirt.

In it, I love you was an awkward 
obligation, to hear it back,
or to awkwardly not.
In it, pleasure did not make 
pain worth it. Love was a mistake
one kept committing anyway.

I remembered visiting a patient
at church the other week;
the pastor had us all hug
and say I love you, 
and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I did it then, but here I balk. 
Speak now, or forever hold my piece.
I hold it in.
It shatters.

As I blink off my poem and look at the doctor,
I can’t help but see him, old boy, in the dark 
beard, the gold-rim glasses, the soft voice.

The year must be too new;
I must have asked the cab for the wrong day.
The driver pushed the gas 

and left me at the future.
My brain said, say any hospital but that, but that, 
so my throat simply repeated the that.

This must be him,
(not the one I loved, but still a mutual connection point, a tangential reminder, like almost anything is–any cloud, bossa nova song, blue sedan, yellow shirt, old pair of sneakers, spiral shell, jar candle, blackberry bush, fine-tipped marker, tomato seedling, rolled sleeve, plate of scrambled eggs, burned CD, old kayak, receding figure in the rearview mirror)
a medical degree, a gold ring, and fine-lined decades later.
Here, he’s known me longer than I’ve been alive.

The white coat, old, old friend, turns his pockets inside-out.
And what could it be? 
Acid Reflux. Heart Attack. Kidney Stone. Stomach Flu. Pregnancy.
Hard to know at this moment, he says, like a stranger.

He doesn’t know me after all.
He doesn’t know who we are, or when.
This is the stupidly correct hospital. Not his. It is today. It is this hour.

————————————–

Mary Zhou called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"A Patient Record (excerpt)" by Mary Zhou

The leaving was such that each apple
in the orchard glassed over into ghost-form

on 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 become a fabric to dress in.

I practice sewing parts of my body shut:
the mouth, an ear, the space between my fingers.

At the edge of the orchard I find an owl.
Bring my hands around the middle of the algid body,

between my palms it moves as dead things move.
Still, I’m gentle as I walk the owl out of the orchard

to the place of bramble and stumps. Lay the bird out like a boat,
like a baby in the arms, like a dirge.

Slow gold light slips,
the night freeze blackens fruit trees.

I continue to visit the owl. The spiders come.
The flies, too. For a moment one of the owl’s eyes opens.

I look through the eye into the back of his death,
parts of flight and story leak out.

The collapse of the left lung: green.
The collapse of the right lung: sky.

I’ve only ever had one good dream
in 46 years of bad dreams and it was of sleeping

in a moon field with my daughter while friends
placed inocybe between my teeth.

The eye of the owl closes.
The buck says it’s peaceful here, to be with you like this.

I don’t say anything because I don’t speak anymore.
Within a streak of light, wasps fly out of the ground

as leaves fall in the orchard.
I become a ghost apple at the nose of a buck.

————————————–

Kelly Gray called us from Camp Meeker, CA.

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"The Coldening" by Kelly Gray

I want to be: a good boy, your domesticated coyote. 

My tongue’s handwriting is the shape of your body
unshaved and without a shower.

They need us to feel disgusted 
with ourselves, so you commit

to my appetite unreserved. 
You become tender only while listening to crust 

punk and letting my fingers impersonate what I really want. 
The moon is a cuck watching our disentanglement. 

I can’t remember if I slept but the birds are our mothers 
waking us up. You make my coffee like a prayer, 

so I call you a saint right before we kiss.  
It is time to creep into something 

other than each other, but you don’t need a leash
to take me on a walk. You’re five feet taller than me

when I’m on all fours. You fear a million fears about me, 
but only a handful are true.

————————————–

Mary Violet called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"The First Time a Man Fucked me Like a Man" by Mary Violet

You’re like a paragraph in a book, he says, folding a dollar bill into an origami ring at the bar, and I’m not sure if it’s an insult. He slips the ring onto my forefinger: don’t get too excited. Should I apologize to you or myself or the woman who loved him before? I stay for the story. He is the only one who can make me laugh during an argument. We huddle in the doorway of the pub, passing the vape back and forth in the cold. He mocks my rotating flavors: watermelon, mango, strawberry. I tell him I miss my cigarettes but really, it’s just autumn again. Puff, puff.  I’m rotting from the inside. Downing pills with an Old Fashioned. My heart is episodic, my brain one chemical imbalance after another. This unfurling is not what I wanted. He’s the head rush from the first good drag. The first sip of coffee to cure a hangover. I’m living at the bottom of the bottle and it’s beautiful here, all glass and no windows. Who is there left to quit for? The bodies in the lake, one of them mine. The bodies in his pool, all of them my lovers. I slaughter them to the gods of my wanting. I like the way he talks to his cats. Throws one over a shoulder and coos. I ache for this rough with my soft. A 4am kiss, a purpling bruise on my bicep. All those late night drives, always to him. We’re at the bar again. I’m nursing an unwanted Tito’s shot as he ignores me for a man with a matching DUI. He only notices when I storm away. Follows as I’m trying to hide so I give him a hard time because how dare he watch me bleed. Scar, I love you. He says my childhood nickname like he can hardly lift it. I’ve forgotten how it feels to be seen and still wanted. I can outrun anything, even love. I can shoehorn any ending I want, even with my heart in his chokehold. In this version, I fish my lovers’ bodies out of the pool for one last dance before burial. I lay my vapes on their graves instead of flowers.

————————————–

Scarlett Hume called us from Washington, DC.

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"Can't Do Without You" by Scarlett Hume

Get in vans with strangers: a Palo-Santo heavy Chevy G20 
with a sonnet-spilling prophet; a red 70’s Volkswagen 
shaggin' wagon with three long-haired surfers headed South; 
a fuzzy pink and purple pimped out festival-goer’s fantasy 
stocked with the best candy—one taste and I make-out 
with God. Talk myself out of a felony on one side of the 
border, have my first lucid dream on the other. Skinny dip 
a bioluminescent shoreline with a nowhere-bound time
-traveller, his touch the lightning that strikes me sober, 
makes me want to remember. Take LSD blessed by 
a Mayan shaman on a Panamanian beach. Find out 
the only love I’ve ever known isn’t free—my softened 
gaze on strangers spinning around me, I love them not 
because they’re mine but because they never will be. 
Get all my shit stolen and backpack for three months 
without a backpack. Dance callouses onto the bottoms 
of my feet. When strangers barge into the van, I learn 
that boundaries don’t need to be barbed wire fences, 
a purple velvet rope is all you need. The prophet 
heads North and Tara asks Are you sure he’s not the one 
who stole all your shit? Nope. Hand what’s left of me 
to a golden-haired dreamer who hymns any instrument 
he holds. Change my mind about building a home in the 
gap between his front teeth. Leave him carving our initials 
in the rearview like the one before him left me. Fall in love 
during a solar eclipse. Let a wizard undress my notions 
of pleasure in the stolen darkness at mid-day, melt into 
the world of tantra without knowing what it means. Yes, 
a nameless rose does smell as sweet. I’d forego the forever 
my college sweetheart promised when he said he’d ask 
my dad, like I was an 18th century commodity. I’d handpick 
the same bouquet of brief eternities, still slam on the gas 
pedal—my rose-coloured windshield shattered to pieces 
when I travel to the final frontier to find the lights 
in his Northern eyes out of order those nights. Kintsugi: 
the Japanese art of repairing broken items with gold lacquer; 
freesias swooning over the fallen vase—her slow dance of 
shimmering scars. Given the chance, I’d still fling myself 
off the shelf, bless the falls that broke me golden.

————————————–

Dré Pontbriand called us from Antigua & Barbuda.

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"Things I'd Still Do" by Dré Pontbriand

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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"My Last Summer with Dad, 2023" by Annie Powell Stone

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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"Sunday Tea" by Derrick Austin

My dad died
and sports came back.
We wore masks at his funeral
to avoid being next, I guess.

The night before
Joe Kelly fired at Carlos Correa’s head
and cleared the bench
and I get it,
because what other response is there to feeling cheated
than bearing witness to your hate blossoming
from your body,
your spite-filled fingers gripping the splitting seams,
your hurtling release spitting seeds
that will line the graves
of generational grudges.

What song do you serve your ears
the morning after your mom sends you home
with a peace flower
and you say goodbye in the dark
because it hurts to see?

So King Push pummels my skull
as my jaw sits hollow and jagged,
a haggard quarry of heavy stones
and I stare at a cracked tree limb,
angled 90 degrees
in a non-committal breeze.

And a bird cries like a rusty swingset
and now I see the hurt
has just begun to bloom.

————————————–

Marissa DeSantis called us from Cleveland, OH.

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"Bench Clearing" by Marissa DeSantis

The last night we spoke, you said we could make this work.
I sold the bed we used to sleep on, to forget, hoping it would work.
 
I left the pink book you gave me on my desk, your letters
in my drawer, the ones where you said love is work.
 
I left the memory of us sleeping on a cliffside in my head
but deleted the picture we took, dead-eyed from waking up to work
 
at 5 AM on another coast, the night sea barely visible beyond your head
laid against my thigh, sprawled black hair, it was easy work
 
to be in love with you, but it was impossible to love you
in a way you felt. We were two felled trees attached by thin string, trying to work
 
gravity against itself. In a Key Largo parking lot, years ago, before we ever fell
through each other, your hand brushed against mine. We worked
 
so hard to be that simple again. B, forgive me. I would have
given myself away (I did) just to make it work.

————————————–

Jarrett Moseley called us from Charlotte, NC.

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"Work Ghazal" by Jarrett Moseley

"these days, everybody wants to hear the prophecies of yore at a mcdonald’s drive through, and i just don’t think that that’s what i’m after"

& when my friend pulls up & the speaker starts crackling with some eldritch horror, & it asks,
do you want to die with that?
& my friend looks over at me & asks, well, do you?
& i say i’m good with just the pepsi, thanks
& the eldritch horror, profound & decrepit, wails like a thousand suns being born or the edge of a paper slicing through skin or your dad shutting the door on your family the morning that he dies
& my friend says, oh, i think they only have coke products here,
& i say, hm, then i guess a cherry coke
& my friend says, okay, a mcchicken, a cherry coke, plus can i get an answer the question unspoken in my heart?
because my friend is always saying shit like that,
especially in the mcdonald’s drive through
& this time the voice from the speaker is sweet dulcet caramel dripping off a spoon, a siren song in symphony,
& my friend says, damn, i think i’m a dollar short,
but it’s okay because i have two dollars in my pocket, & anyway, the prophecies are free here, free like the way any of us are, free as a man with an albatross around his neck, free as an albatross around a man’s neck, since the albatross is dead, and isn’t death a kind of freedom?, free like a limited time only BOGO sale at the Gap, free like you’ll still have to give up your firstborn son, but whatever, who’s having babies in this economy, anyway, not to mention your firstborn won’t be a sun, if anything they’ll be the MOON,
& we drive to the window
& my friend’s camry sounds like it might fall apart right there
& so might i, if i’m being honest
& i look into the black hole at the first window
or rather, it looks into me,
i blink first
& it becomes a murder of crows, silent, except to say
second window only tonight,
& then i say it, just for good measure,
second window only tonight,
& we’re at the second window,
which is a little grimy,
with a freckled bespectacled teen behind it,
& she looks like me, a study in personal time travel,
but when i ask my friend he says,
hey, doesn’t that guy look like me?
so it could be the whole world, or nothing at all
(like most things)
& i’m handed the cherry coke without much fanfare
& the teen leans out the window to whisper in my friend’s ear
& i strain to listen
but all i hear is the rustling of the first breeze that ever swept this earth,
& when my friend turns to me, 
he says, the prophecy machine is down tonight. can i get a sip of your cherry coke?
& we drive away, dial-shifting through static,
as the world dissolves into whipping wind, fresh fizz, 
& our laughter, spilling into empty eternity

————————————–

Aparna Paul called us from Cambridge, MA.

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"these days, everybody wants to hear the prophecies of yore..." by Aparna Paul

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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"First Cumbia" by Tatiana Chaterji

We promise to protect each other 
After Willie Perdomo            

                                                        which means we                 pinky swear it     
                                                        which means we draw     
                                                                    our pinkies 
                                                                    like switchblades         
                                                                    from brassy knuckles     
                                                        which means            
                                                 i hold             your hands
             
                          between the pocket space                            where we keep
the taser    between    the thumb & index   the hammer   between    the index & middle   
the cross   between the middle & ring     & the middle is my weapon     of choice 
                                                        which means                    
                            
                                  i talk a lot  
                                                      but my face says           
                                                                                   i can’t 
                                                                                                             fight 

your face says we should run                             which means     
i face you standing still pressing my switchblade into yours wishing the switchblades were switchblades 
                                                                 & not pinky promises we draw from brassy knuckles    
                                                                 want brass knuckles but don’t want proximity       
                                                                 want a gun but don't want that smoke    
                                                                 want incense but only handmade   
                                                                 want these hands  
                                                                 to be protection    
                                                                 enough   


that’s what space in poems are for:       to store     arsenals


   
in this ars poetica         keys between my fingers never felt comfortable like i would get sliced too                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                 if it came down to it                                                                 




i am walking across a blacktop    
i could tar myself into    
the sun is saying 
i should get home    
but home is on my hip   
i am aware of you     
& all the things that follow   to follow    & nothing more         
                                                                 which means
                   we promise to protect each other 
                                                                                we pinky swear it

————————————–

Lauren Dotson called us from Chicago, IL.

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"We Promise to Protect Each Other" by Lauren Dotson

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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"sometimes at 10:37pm you need to change your life" by Sarena Brown

"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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"decline mantra (aldi at 46th and market)" by Diandra Williams

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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"guide to melancholy (ft. jar of olives) by Annabelle Chen

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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"Keep your Popcorn on Fridays, We Want a Living Wage" by Jaime Jacques

I want to write about eternity too 
just like the cats
probing at their breakfasts

or your two week old hands Isadora 
brushing my beard like sleepwalking
windshield wipers or the way the sun 

uses maple leaves as lampshades 
if we can spend as much of ourselves 
in time as out of it if our conch shell ears

keep after months the cymbal samba of the sea 
if your feet tender toweled and purpling 
remember the ant hills and thumb tacks 

and jelly spills they haven’t found yet 
if your big sister and her enormous feelings
and your mom and her incomparable well 

of kindness and how they use each moment
almost like a ladle if everything is like breath 
if we can use jazz the way we use a shower 

if everything can be a little of everything else 
if the naked basement bulb of my patience
in its morse distress can most times be enough 

if the slapstick surgeon of memory can hang in 
if the horror show doesn’t get too hungry 
for more and more dimensions if we can start 

carpet bombing the nations of the earth 
with dollar bills and daisy petals instead 
if our favorite pizza place can please fall 

into the amber bath of immortality and 
we can live there in perennial Friday evening 
they’re bringing cups of ice and the ovens are awake

————————————–

Dylan Emmons called us from Poughkeepsie, NY.

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"Progressively Ambitious Poem for the Future" by Dylan Emmons

“There can be but one teacher – nature. She must always be consulted.”
     -   Camille Pissarro

I’m wondering how best to preserve 
this day when I find myself summoned 
outside into the warming light, tossing
my net beyond the low islands and 
the jagged edge of the Sound, 
hoping its threads return in gilded 
attire, yielding a tangle of blessings 
culled from both sea and hollow 
that are a mix of old-growth splendor 
and the commonplace, while I fall 
back to silence, watching the way 
the morning light breaks apart and 
is then quickly redrawn by wind gusts
that blur and wrinkle the surface of 
the water, and entranced by the soft 
rustling of the beach grass and taste 
the tang of salt-scented air while 
white-capped tides are suffused with 
the same mussel-blue hue as the 
open fist of sky and seeing how 
both air and water are stitched together 
by these clamorous gulls rising in 
rapture then swooning towards shore 
and asking what more can be done 
other than to try and somehow slow 
earth’s hurry and call summer back.

————————————–

John Muro called us from Glastonbury, CT.

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"Beholden" by John Muro

three soldiers in tinfoil jackets
roasting on the bottom oven rack

she’d cut the ends off one too long for its own good
hacked chunks from the pudgy pocked one
sliced the largest of the lot into quarters

pulling used foil from a crumpled stash she
manhandled the starchy meal
into silver uniforms
tried to unwrap and uncrinkle
but eventually abandoned hope
supper could be smooth or smartly dressed

when the oven sang out its warning
she skinned them from the foil
burned fingers in her haste to separate
what she’d spent so much energy on
wadded up the bits she couldn’t reuse and
chucked ‘em in the bin

the bin

it’s where most of us find ourselves
after a relationship
sharing space with those silver skins
not fitting any better than the aluminum did
her and her meal prep
her and her insistence others should hide
what she plans to devour

————————————–

C. Late called us from Kansas City, MO.

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"Potato" by C. Late

after Chappell Roan

The cold knows me in ways you never will.
Darkness clamps her hand over the city’s mouth.
Still, light. Music rises like smoke. And God is anything
but subtle — this joint, our first kiss. Now my heart’s
a helium balloon — pink, no strings attached.
Sailing high among the lanterns — paper clouds 
in a makeshift sky in a lesbian bar where 
I keep my sunglasses on so you can’t see me 
cry. If we’re already in Hell, then that explains 
middle school, which isn’t when I knew. But the body, 
like God, offers signs. Neon and to the point — 
Open. Welcome. Thank You. When I called desire
by name, the fog lifted from our past. (Seventh grade 
art class. I wanted to tell you.) Twelve years 
later, your palms are electric against my cheeks. 
Eyes, the color of parched earth — so here is my grief. 
Winter, like any crush, renders my layers useless.
I forgive myself. In New York, there are no chance 
encounters. There are choices other than fear.

————————————–

Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro called us from Wharton, NJ.

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"Naked in Manhattan" by Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro

April 2024
Wish you were here is no synonym for I miss you, though of course I do.
Wish you were here 
Like I know you would love this
LIke I want to remember this with you, not to you
Wish we could rebuild the subtleties to each other and build the details
Fall over each other in the telling 
Want you to feel this first hand, absorbing it too
Count you among the partners here along for their own rides
Drinking in the soprano soloist, a bringer of comfort, this time firmly hand in hand

I said I wish you were here because I WISH YOU WERE HERE
This time, I’ll settle for one of us

November 2024
I miss you jumps to my mind and tempts my tongue, only for strangers to hear it.
To be somewhere alone is to be there unseen, thoughts unheard, except by their thinker.
Their thinker, like The Thinker, sits unseen by any he knows, his crowded head superimposed on whipsering autumn plane leaves.

Surely I am beheld as I behold, traversing sunlit plazas, long skirted and parasol shielded
If only as Narcissus in mirror-black windows.
My thoughts have value even if no one reflects on them.
These mountains scrape the sky even after the sun dips behind them,
the gardens keep growing in darkness even after the dykes who dressed up for the art have wandered out
Jesus and Mary Magdalene remain trapped amid rough marble after I stop circling them .

And I grow softer and stronger by the day, even though at the end of it there's no one to feel it for a thousand miles

————————————–

Juniper Danger called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"The Evolution of Missing You" by Juniper Danger

"4-tongue poem" by Chiara Crisafulli

Storms– Wave
action– Sand

crash– A kite coming
close–

Wobbling
moon– Desire
work– These optimisms–

There’s your thunder– Your downpour
across the street–

A kid beating a tree
with its stick– Panting
about every day–

	Too hot
	to worry
	about plot–

Chewing
ice into the mic–

Today a hundred-
year-old woman
died– Separately
I saw so many
maggots later–

As a recluse
I really went
all out–

————————————–

Jenna Cardinale called us from Brooklyn, NY.

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"New York Summer" by Jenna Cardinale

May 10th
Perseverance is terminal,	
Every day dully getting up.
The end times keep edging us
But I’m a Taurus—
I prefer to come
And to go another round.
They shot Katy Perry
Into orbit, then let her back in.
We turned the mission into memes
To stop thinking of burned old growth forests,
Boiling oceans, where all the bees have gone.
In the shuttle there was something
To do with a world tour.
Will the wet bulb be worth it?
A senator says we all have to die sometime,
Which is news to me!
I am always telling people
How Katy Perry killed a nun.
Now she’s coming for the rest of us.
I too could call myself an astronaut;
We tell ourselves stories in order to et cetera.
I wanted heaven
But space spat me out.
I heard earth girls are easy.
I’m so easy I only learned how to fight
Back last week. I didn’t win.
But I cured my depression
By making the bed!
The cure lasts ‘til just past
The point I’ve smoothed the duvet.
I draw the curtains. I play a record.
I shake my locally-sourced oat milk
To eke out one more use.
Does it bother me, us fucking other people?
Jury’s out. But if I picture you
Brushing another woman’s hair
From her mouth an atom bomb detonates.
I see all my bones. They are female
And furious. They rattle and shriek like death
Metal. Don’t fucking brush another woman’s hair
From her mouth. A hole’s a hole, darling,
But tenderness is non-renewable.
Bottle your affection for only me.
I’m sorry.
I have to get up again.
I hate when there’s only one outcome.

————————————–

Jamie Hood called us from Brooklyn, NY.

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"May 10th" by Jamie Hood

Solidarity is pissing 
in adjacent stalls. 
A godly marriage 
is a throuple with 
Christ. Dude was 
a real trove of sword 
lore. We cheered for 
the biracial babies. 
At the racist wedding, 
the pastor praised 
Korean cars & 
submissive wives.
Cousins snuck liquor 
into the dry reception 
while sober Christians 
gnashed their teeth. 
So began the diaspora. 
One spent a year in
Singapore; another
posted pics from 
Botswana. Were  
we the first to get 
divorced? At least
on that side of the
family. For twelve 
years she was my
grandmother too.
Remember how we
buried her in the rain,
& how afterward we 
ate crab cakes.

————————————–

Alexa Vallejo called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"Lawful Good" by Alexa Vallejo

What bloomed from grief
	came instinct, 
			came wrath.
The aftermath of my longing 
will show on your back like Lichtenberg figures 
after the subtlety 
		   of a strike.

My beautiful friend, 
I do think heat causes molecules 
to excite,
and if you let me,
we’ll honor the burn marks after this smudging.

But not before prayer, not before
kneeling behind you
your scent, curiously ancient I’m 
                     suddenly       wet 
I want you protected, well fed. So please, let me 
sage you.	 The air around you.
The air around persimmons you’ve hung out 
to dry, leaving you / not bruised 
but sugar-bloomed into a world you want to 
breathe in.

And you’re gonna wanna know what becomes of it, the tsuris of us.
Probably nothing, it’s nothing, right? I keep 

finding you in kitchens. 
And I, tending to a grow bag full of fairytale eggplants,
their blooms bowing down as if in 
	shame
		or in love
or as if grieving was a thing of
shame or love             or is it 
your scent, curiously ancient,
that is the intimate why of my grieving.

————————————–

C. Rivera called us from New York, NY.

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"Sugar Bloom & Smudge" by C. Rivera

I have been made aware of the fact that you died 
in 1846, but am hoping this will reach you regardless. 
I have heard you are the foremost expert on solar activity, 
weather patterns, and astronomical cycles, as well as 
the best times to fish and how to build a community. 
I have heard you lived and worked in New Hampshire, 
which is where I have recently come to live and sometimes 
but rarely work. Did you know that ticks no longer freeze here, 
in the winter? The annual mean temperature has increased 
by about 2.6°F since your days. I check my ankles in both 
August and January, and am disappointed by how little 
it snows. I read about you on the Almanac’s website 
(a website is like a book that’s in the air) and wanted to reach out. 
They have a biography on you, they praise your name, they say 
there were two total solar eclipses in the US in your lifetime. 
They publish a new cake recipe on your birthday every year. 
They sell things now, too, like a Fruits Vegetables & Herbs 
1000pc Puzzle for $19.95 and a Jeffersonian Brass Kinetic 
Wind Vane for $119.99. Don’t worry, that’s inflation, mostly. 
I know you just wanted to help the travelers, sailors, bookkeepers,
beekeepers, and prognosticators. I don’t know if those people 
exist anymore. Robert Bailey Thomas, I fear summer now rots 
into last ditch efforts and expletives over the softness of peaches,
so I’ll wrap up with some questions I hope you can answer. 
Why can I only see some stars out of the corner of my eye? 
Was your America much greener? Why, even when I am so quiet, 
and so good, can I not catch a fish? Why did you die, when 
you knew every psalm by heart and every benefit of witch hazel? 
Do you ever feel like July has forgotten your name? 
Do you know what I mean? Hey, Robert Bailey Thomas, 
please say you know what I mean.

————————————–

Lauren Mills called us from London, UK.

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"Letter to the Editor of the Old Farmer's Almanac, Robert Bailey Thomas" by Lauren Mills

do not be afraid of your own heart beating
there must be chocolate maybe even daily
I would recommend buying the better cheese
drink orange juice in the morning it will help
drink wine or whiskey and write things down
it is always good to know your own handwriting
remember how clean sheets feel and hot baths
keep lip balm by your bed keep a tissue in your pocket
buy a lamp so your room is warm and buy things
so they are memories later and look at your hands
they are beautiful! Once a week make a nice meal
because you can and don’t be afraid to be alone
that would be like throwing away perfectly good
socks or bras keep them and buy new underwear
it’s easy to forget but let your friends remind
you and remember your friends and their favorite
colors and kiss someone just to taste their lips
love your apartment even when the microwave breaks
love food even when it is toast from the toaster
love your hands and your skin put rings on your fingers
wear a designer lipstick and keep it in your pocket

————————————–

Charlotte Alexander called us from Moscow, ID.

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"The Way to Keep Going in Your Twenties" by Charlotte Alexander

after Ocean Vuong
 
and why 
            this want 
for permanence surround 
 
sound my life with 
            backups
sound out my name and 
 
it’s almost a library
            flower pressed screen dazed
stillness
 
a twinkie and her 
            wrapper words
she presses in the shape of a 
 
body I too 
            will one day 
be glad I am 
 
no longer 
            violet
and instead fertilizer
 
no mama’s memoir 
            no
mama to read my 
 
memoir will be 
            ocean 
open ooooo like whale sounds
 
I will linger forever in the 
            aqua
uh huh I used to be 
fern
now I’m
 
feather my body retreats
            for
ever/y line I write I
 
forget my hands can strangle 
            recycle like 
madness like magic 
 
I immortalize the white I 
            wrangle 
with pen body
 
oh 
            body
earth will ground us 
 
whole

————————————–

Fiona Martinez called us from San Diego, CA.

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"Unassigned" by Fiona Martinez

we did not hold hands
often we clenched legs
under the table

hands were too public
for two who did not know
how feelings socailize

we sat on a bench
on the corniche
watching the nile at noon

it was full and calm
we could hear the wind sing
to the trees on its sides

you held my hand
and I looked
as you took it towards you

the wind stopped singing
and my heart wanted
to come out and taste the water

I said look how my hand
looks no matter
how many times I wash it

you said look how mine
sweats and then asked
if it bothered me

I held your wrist
and folded your hand
and brushed it with mine
again and again
until it is my hand that is wet

you smiled and looked down
happy and shy like a bird
folding into itself

I asked you for a kiss
I could not say it
I wrote it in a notebook
you once wrote your name in

words were too intimate
for two who did not know
how love talks

the notebook became
a pigeon back and forth
between us it held words
our mouths dared not admit

you wrote a falouka
is where you get one
you knew the nile
had none that day

no one teaches a girl
how to want
without bruising
the family name

so you swallowed it
and it bloomed somewhere
I could not reach

and I loved before
I had the language
then it came in a dialect
I had to translate for myself

so I spat it out
and kept the bitter ache

I would go through
your things
and asked about them

I claimed to get to know you
better through the small and ordinary
to break what ice may be left

you said I know
but I secretly hoped
I would be mistaken
for your watermelon lipstick
and go home with you

but you went home
and I stayed

I pass by the bench
and ask it why
are you still here
it says nothing but I hear
echoes of your laughter

so I sit and watch
the nile full and calm
but the wind no longer sings
it just blows
and I get cold easily nowadays
but I wait
a falouka might pass

————————————–

Muhammad Rabih called us from Egypt.

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"Untitled" by Muhammad Rabih

When I Try to Verify Why They Carpet Driveways After the Rain, Google Keeps Feeding Me Distressingly Hot Factoids About Hermaphroditic Earthworm Sex
Until I thought to check, I thought I knew:
worms emerge from dirt to tar
on the run from drowning. Actually no one understands
their reasons. Maybe

worms emerge from dirt to tar
when vibrations ape a predator. Or are
their reasons maybe
traveling fast on slicked slab? Reproducing? 

When vibrations ape a predator, or are
mock applause when I drop a glass
traveling fast on slicked slab, reproducing
language is beyond me. My speech breaks with static snow,

mock applause, when I drop a glass
knife voice. Sticking to the surface
language is beyond me. My speech breaks with static snow,
turns trail. Trail: proof and proof of absence. Here’s my opened-by-a-
        
knife voice sticking to the surface
of the steel. Spill
turns trail. Trail: proof and proof of absence. Here’s my opened-by-a-
mouth mouth. I say

of the steel spill
that I can be allowed to want. I’m saying
mouth: Mouth. I say
all

that I can be allowed to want. I’m saying
I’m
all
mouth,


I’m
just open
mouth,
and I’m

just-open.
I feed
and I’m
equalizing pressure.

I feed
like falling and I fuck like falling,
equalizing pressure,
meant to shed a wreck of men

like falling, and I fuck like falling
was becoming of the nymph stage. I claim I was
meant to shed a wreck of men,
their aims. I knew what needy grubs, what writhing life I’d swallowed clean,
          
was becoming. Of the nymph stage, I claim I was
on the run from drowning. Actually no one understands
their aims. I knew what needy grubs, what writhing life I’d swallowed clean
until I thought to check. I thought I knew.

————————————–

Callie Jennings called us from Boston, MA.

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"When I Try to Verify Why They Carpet Driveways After the Rain..." by Callie Jennings

Tonight you lay on your own couch, trying to head off fixation. Your cigar is just a. You hold it oscillating between Cuban and. You are not. You tell yourself this.  You flip through your notebook, and it is filled with pictures of you riding the night. The cigar is in your fingers, which place it to your lips. You take a luxurious puff. Wake up, you whimper, and linger, eyes glazing. Up, you manage. Up. The notebook falls from your other hand. Gravity is repression, you think and try to not. You know how you will feel when you awaken. You can already feel the cold sweat coming.

————————————–

JeFF Stumpo called us from Litchfield, NH.

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"[Tonight you lay on your own couch...]" by JeFF Stumpo

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 contradict
the softening skin on her hands
like Kleenex,
like my mother’s.

I desperately want 
to be travelling away from here 
with someone,
with one of these 
walkabout-women at my side 
on a midnight-plane to anywhere:
companionable silence, 
holding hands in anticipation.

II.
My parents call from 
twelve-and-a-half 
hours in the past 
to tell me that 
when they dropped me off 
for my flight to Seoul

on the way out—
they saw a woman
striding confidently through 
the winding Sea-Tac security, 
carrying what they were sure was 
her whole life on her back, Emryse. 
She was going off 
somewhere. 
On her next adventure.

I like to imagine 
her lived-in day-pack,
her tried-and-tested shoes;
her threadbare smile.
I like to think she was happy

because
they told me they knew 
that would be me, 
one day, and
they told me she had been 
alone.


————————————–

Emryse Geye called us from Portland, OR.


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"200 Words About Airports" by Emryse Geye

Poetry via voicemail. Missed calls you need to hear.

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