VOICEMAIL POEMS - Spring 2023

VOICEMAIL POEMS - Summer 2023

VOICEMAIL POEMS - Fall 2023

VOICEMAIL POEMS - Winter 2024

Susannah called us from Chapel Hill, NC.

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'Da' by Susannah Richardson

Watching my body open, a game
you play like kissing darts, like bad
girls or dark honey. Tell me I’m your favorite
fast car, your better-than-everything baby. I am
all for you. Take me to your wild heaven. Say
video. Backyard Fame. Sing my name
a drunk kiss, undress me a pool of perfume.
I am an idea worth living for.
Whistle. Lean in. Pull.

---------------------------------------

Kayla Wheeler called us from Manchester, NH.

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'Now You Do' by Kayla Wheeler

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.

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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

we’ve picked a color to make her happy / honey blonde or burgundy / a hollering red / blissful obsidian / a dreamy lavender / after the wash & waking / of each strand / with something to keep moisture / I touch the scalp with ease / bring only good gifts / & listen to the singing in my lower back / neck / arms & wrist / when I conjure the souls of these digits / to practice / my pinky gives me the most pain / when I am braiding / shouts at its bend / ties yarn or kanekalon / at the square root of someone’s head / someone who I love / & my shoulders hunch in defiance / & my forehead oils itself anew / & my knees bring their grievances / to the top of the bloodstream / & here / is my body / wilting in reverence. / if I could / I would destroy every memory / of standing in a mirror / with brush & head half done / the feeling of needing help / & no one to ask for it / I don’t know what the world expects / of little Black girls but / it isn’t / freedom / to know oneself intimately / to take pleasure in our many transformations / grow 18 inches of weave in the span of a few hours / & be recognizable only to those who love us whole / & consistently / I make braids or conversation / & the head I am working leans & aches / we cue a movie / coo a humble song / & ours is a texture architectural / mimicking the forest & its triumphant green / I take the shape of trees / I am as old as the unshed leaf / every spruce cedar & pine is showing off for me / & all my sisters deserve the sun’s reach / the wind’s kiss & howl / atop the scalp / proof we are the earth’s earliest kin / shapeshifting for protection / & when we are done / I slip each end through a candle’s light / or cloth and burning water / a small flame prayer / sent up in smoke / or sealed & soaking / in the center of my hands / this I learned / this I taught myself / a secret I pass to all I love who mirror me / I don’t know what the world expects / of little Black girls but / we never did this to be beautiful / though we did become so / in the process

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Ariana Brown called us from Houston, TX.

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"We Never Did This To Be Beautiful" by Ariana Brown

I got that dog in me, orchestra of barking,
I got work in the morning and a flock of dogs
beneath my sternum, I got bottled rage and a whole lotta corks,
I’m quirked up and collapsing courts, I’m crushing quartz idols
and scattering the powder, the dogs are powerful,
on God, they’re guards, they watch for onlookers
looking for danger, I’m done with mercy sex
and ungrateful strangers, I’m over my ex-boyfriend
but not what he did to me, I forgot to forgive,
the dogs were kids once too, puppies,
I got progeny, sons like I’m Saturn,
quiet fires, it’s quietus, these riotous dogs
demand change but cringe at righteousness,
beware of evil bosses, beware
of good dogs, beware of crosses.

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William Ward Butler called us from Santa Cruz, CA.

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"I Got That Dog In Me" by William Ward Butler

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.

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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

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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

————————————–

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

for SSH

green anemones reach out soft tentacles
clinging onto my finger like the rough tongue of a cat
we talk
about how you think you’d stay there
for him
about Brugel and how his paintings are painted as if an outsider were looking in

and i say i wish I had a tiny periscope to see in the touch pools with
to see what the anemones see
or don’t see
i wonder
if they have eyes
if i disappear from their world

with a soft tug of my finger

detaching from their eager hunger

————————————–

Grace Cooper called us from Fort Collins, CO.

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"Touch Pools At The Marine Science Center" by Grace Cooper

in Philadelphia		
		
my mouth open
			stuffed with black soil
			sprouting poppies&poppies		

drifting blood pollen
			radiating priests holy
			spirits possessing hands	

			soaked in rosewater 
floating delicate skeletal 
fingers grinding bodies into		

phantom dust 	floating
phantom limbs of a
phantom history

 		A BREATHLESS RIDDLE:
how do you remember 
what you can’t remember?

i will peel back skin, 
roll back my eyes & show you 
my tongue, ribcage, & thighs
		
i will show you the depth of my ghost
the one that will saturate your breath
			the one whose name you will give 

every petal as it
withers & drifts from the 
			chasm of my mouth

			to yours

————————————–

p.e. garcia called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"This Would Be Easier If I Had Your Body" by p.e. garcia

i possess 

the digital body 

of norman reedus 

and carry the corpse

of my mother 

up mt. olympus 

trying to feel

anything at all

i marvel 

at the apocalypse 

skyscrapers 

gutted 

like apartments 

in east cleveland 

like the horrors

we wage 

against children 

in palestine

the ocean

is endless

if i believed

in motherhood

my mother 

would be 

the ocean 

i watch 

the waves 

wash away

the tears

the blood

concrete

and shattered glass

————————————–

Kai White called us from Kent, OH.

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"The Ocean Is My Mother" by Kai White

it’s summer & i still try to write a poem about last winter when we broke up he  said  his type was fun, simple love & i cried too much because all i know is to love like a child, fingers sticky with want & fear of being left alone & that made me tired or tiring not the first anyway at least no ghosting no snow this time only so much rain & a molded longing no heat could save even this sentence always stuck in the past tense always lonely be it summer or winter i mean long seasons of losses, long grief & my body a pavement burried under the softness of fallen petals because in every season something must learn to kiss the ground & in the quiet of falling i still try & cry & try again it’s summer

————————————–

Tran Tran called us from Vietnam.

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"Nostalgia" by Tran Tran

I tire of treating the world as an
email I wish to delete unopened. 

The newspapers turned into soggy boats,
sailing down gutters slick with oil & blood. 

The software hardening into tyrants,
tyranny softening into a shrug. 

The round trip of light years between money
& its lack, between those with souls & those 

who bury their souls in the gravel pit
of the self. I tire of arguments
 
for the enshrinement of argument,
of this waste of electricity,

lightning without illumination,
corrupted code like sheets of black rain. 

So much to tell versus the energy 
to tell it; the silence of the deep breath. 

I tire, & then I exhale, & draw 
again, not knowing what words will come next.

————————————–

Gregory Crosby called us from Brooklyn, NY.

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"Monday Wears Tuesday's Face Like A Mask" by Gregory Crosby

hair on my head turning silver
koi on your shoulder fading paler
half dozen software updates later
The Algorithm brings us together

koi on your shoulder fading paler
your hands reached for mine in the bar
The Algorithm brings us together
I reach to give directions left or right

your hands reached for mine in the bar
now they reach for mine in the backseat 
as I reach to give directions left or right
our fingers knitted together

now they reach for mine in the backseat
the invisible hand of the algorithm guiding
our fingers knitted together
fingers that swiped right twice

koi on your shoulder fading paler
The Algorithm brings us together

————————————–

Divya Goruganthu called us from Austin, TX.

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"Kismet Algorithm" by Divya Goruganthu

There was a universe in which I was useful.

It wasn’t great.

Payment fulfilled desire with erroneous accuracy.

I had everything and it was too much.

I taped the light switch on. I ate glitter.

The bright brightened til the point of hurt. The definition, hard to watch.

I don’t know what that was all about.

Maybe strawberries, maybe roses.

Did you notice a move to refute grounding details?

Kites wielded by my enemies took credit for the eclipse when I knew it was a body.

I swore it was. 

Joint pain flared up. It was about to rain. Some people believed this.

Meaning kept meeting its makers so casually I became suspicious of language.

I hate that. 

Meet me at the rose farm. It’s b.y.o. cut-resistant gloves. 

What do you say about anything. 

I’ll cover you if you can’t afford it right now. Don’t forget to stretch. Legend has it a penny in 
the vase makes the roses look more alive.

There is a use for shame, less for symmetry.

————————————–

T. Liem called us from Montreal QC / Tiotia:ke.

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"Asymmetry" by T. Liem

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 fervor
clawing 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 obscure
that someone’s biggest flex
is telling you they’ve read me 
and then you search for my Wikipedia page
and all it says is 
-Black
-queer
-longtime resident of the south 
-93 ‘til infinity
 
I hope white people hate my shit
try to say it means nothing in the daylight 
feel so raw and dirty
sneaking peaks on the dark web 
face a hot mess of flush; 
I hope they slam their laptops shut
when they hear footsteps approaching 
hang their heads with shame 
and spend the rest of their lives wondering
how much they missed out on 
 
I hope they outlaw my books 
And then drag queens read them to toddlers
on the front steps of the capital
I hope there are no front steps 
of the capital 
Because I hope the empire falls 
I hope a trans woman throws the first brick
And I hope a page ripped from one of my books
is attached to it 
I hope, one day, I meet a genocide survivor 
all grown up, despite all odds
And they tell me
they know all about my books
And I’ll gasp
and ask them how my poems made it to Palestine 
Through the whisper network, they’ll say
We mixed them with Arabic 
and by the time they reached us
they already had French
Haitian Creole and
Swahili in them too
 
I hope my books are too heady for the Pulitzer 
I hope my books get down on the down-low 
I hope their registration expires
I hope my books live in infamy 
I hope my books turn into history books
buried somewhere long forgotten 
only to be dug up 
in two hundred years 
by whoever is still left on this rock
 
And they read them 
and they cry 
and they wonder what made me write these words
and what type of world we were living in
where people banned books 
and then they take my books
toss them into a pit
pour one out for an ancestor 
and then they burn them for warmth

————————————–

Kelsey L. Smoot called us from Atlanta, GA.

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"Bricks" by Kelsey L. Smoot

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 expanse 
of emptiness – traversing
the chasm between having 
been and soon becoming –
showing us a way forward, 
letting go without regret 
or anguish, and knowing 
this world will be made 
whole again from those
very things that have
been taken or freely given.

————————————–

John Muro called us from Guilford, CT.

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"Bloodgood Maple" by John Muro

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 cannot speak between the lines 
of these memes sent for your entertainment.
A noncommittal event invitation.
My ADHD brain is experiencing mania and I'm consuming consuming media like 
CRUNCHCRUNCHCRUNCH 	potato chips. 
I  am mentally unwell.
I am bedrotting and need attention. 
I miss you but I don't know how to start a conversation anymore. 
I want us to be closer but I'm terrified of being vulnerable first. 
I'm a crow sending shiny things to your inbox 
with no expectation you'll even see them 
I am my mother's daughter - I leave her 317 Instagram reel messages to me unread because I feel too guilty and too avoidant to open them.
There is a chasm of things I have not yet figured out how to say. 
I only know how to write them in my journal.
I don't know which of these things would be useful to voice. 
I am mentally unwell. 
I saw this video of two unlikely animal friends resting on each other & I
 want us to have the same intimacy.

————————————–

Kate Carey called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"POV - I sent you 317 reels on Instagram" by Kate Carey

Make me
dim-witted. One
of those days where
I can’t bare it—the hum
of madness. My belly wreaking
havoc up and down my spine,
intestines in a knot.
Garlic! Disgusting! or maybe
you called it gross & I called it
get me out of here.

A different morning: I’m spinning
sex between my fingers.
Cavorting with an old pillow
case hoping you’ll come along
and lift my top.

As a kid I would peel the skin
off of grapes with my two front teeth
and gently push the innards
into my cheek with my tongue
keeping it safe before coming
down on it with a hard chew. Pulpy
swallow & the great disappointment:
here was a truly valuable soft thing
that I had worked hard for
& didn’t know what to do with.

————————————–

Hannah Rubin called us from Los Angeles, CA.

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"I Rage about You, You Old Ghost" by Hannah Rubin

barking up the right trees
stuck 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 cheese
that green eggs go great 
on a ham sandwich 
that cyber bullying 
is cooler when everyone is doing it

slip-&-slide into stardust 
along greenwood grass
burning the summer 
at both ends 
there’s glass in the pool 
marco polo cut short 
feet cut deep 
red & blue sunburns 
on chlorine skin 
remember when sunscreen 
used to work 
the first time 

fallen hotdog 
soldier slipped 
between truck slats 
hunger driven dance-moves 
filled with 
cruel intentions 
no amount of ketchup 
can cure a broken heart 
but a viral video 
is a bandaid solution 
for missing lunch 

category is horse 
category is narwhal 
category is charades 
is easy when every answer 
is the right answer 
guess flamingo 
guess spider
guess where your hamster went 
I promise you’ll be happy 
with the results 

The kids are so back 
but seriously 
don’t climb a tree 
if you don’t know how 
to get down 
or if your mom can’t 
find the ladder 

but by some act of god 
if you find yourself up there

just close your eyes
try and remember 

how to 
jump

————————————–

Morgan Tessier called us from Toronto, Ontario.

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"The Kids Are So Back" by Morgan Tessier

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 wildness, 
your torso tree trunk, we 
careless pass a bottle 
of warm stolen vodka. 
Sing songs of chipmunks, 
chase each other up plum 
trees, over roofs 
of cars, fluff each others 
tails before we scamper 
through the oaken 
night to bury acorns. 
Came back to teach us 

how to make 
our bodies out of muddy leaves, shape 
our faces from 
a pliant clay. Crop 
vineyard hair, cattail 
braids, let snakes 
grow as they may. 
Pluck river stone 
out of the water, 
become ourselves 
a river. Chisel cloven 
feet for gravel dancing. 
Came back to sing 

again I think, 
together. Seek 
each other out 
by scent, taste 
clove smoke. Dig 
up the acorns, 
and with our fingers 
dirt-caked set them 
shiny in our mouths 
as teeth and gilding 
for our crowns.

————————————–

Allegra Wilson called us from Santa Rosa, CA.

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"Smoke Elder" by Allegra Wilson

This is what you are 
missing Melissa – dust turned to waves 
in the desert – okra coming up two months
too late – a forward-breaking gate opening
into someone else’s field – I walk by
a window and I don’t understand how little I see
you – but so clearly the wasp backing out
of a hole inside a long-dead
tree – when we were children we lived 
with our grandparents and I remember without 
sadness mostly the sound of tires screaming into 
the street – the porch light welcomes 
whatever intercepts it – I praise
insistence – I kiss
my love because our best friend died
when we were 5 years old – a brain tumor –
and then again at 7, 11, 17…43 – bodies 
killing themselves by growing
beyond their own capacity – I’m building
a bed for our visitors – it’s infuriating how little
I understand about re-joining wood already broken
piece by piece – anticipate everything
I hear God saying to no one – I’m still listening
when you stop, for a moment, breathing  
in your sleep – I’m recognizable
now as a part of the man who made me – 
every man is a suspect – inside my own mouth
I’m annoyed by who I cannot seem to be –
do you miss this Melissa – every part of our body 
is ash aching to be reminded it is ash – unlike fire 
reaching through the face of every forest 
in order to be incited by wind or offered 
some relief – I’ve learned to flinch 
by standing absolutely still – it isn’t death exactly living
without you – the purpose of a rope 
is to borrow someone else’s strength – that’s why
I’m calling you – when I pray I hear nothing 
so clearly as our new voice 
singe-scoured and full of disbelief –

————————————–

TC Tolbert called us from Tucson, AZ.

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"This is What You Are" by TC Tolbert

It's a bus stop in South America
And crossing five lanes of traffic
At 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 language
And our tensions so high,
A tennis court in my chest.
Love was being rewritten in my head
You were becoming the epitome of sacrifice.

You asked me what I would answer if you pledged me to marry you.
I said I’d wait a few years
And that was the correct response.
It’s a man in a bulletproof vest asking you the intention of your visit,
To give her hope.

We cross out of the city.
There are dogs on rooftops,
We are sharing headphones
And the glass begins to fog in the humid jungle evening.
Whatever home there is left
I find it as I lay my head on your shoulder.
There is a song humming subtly over the foreign soap opera on the TV.
It’s not quite your taste
But it is my favorite.

You will be able to sleep on the plane
And I won't ever again for the next two years.

————————————–

Ky Pacheco called us from Flagstaff, AZ.

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"You Won't Ever Again be in Love in a Foreign Country" by Ky Pacheco

The cut on my ankle bleeds into the shape of an exclamation point
You speak and it comes out ornate
swirling, as if from an an ancient book 

I’m trying to follow those letters
which 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 

Let me tell you about swimming:
The bleeding stops 
The world ends long enough for you to miss it 
The cold snaps, like a spell from the end of a wand 
melting fear into a body 
the weightlessness unhowling me 

In the water your words circle me 
floating in amongst the moon jellies 
On my back I watch my breasts like two pale ducks bob in the gentle waves 
I watch them fly away 

Your words bend into the exclamation point 
Make a portal of me
A sentence of me 
A loudness of me 

I paddle back to shore 
a pearl growing under my tongue 
I settle into the meat between land and sea 
and decide to stay there

————————————–

Asha Berkes called us from Tacoma, WA.

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"Lagoon" by Asha Berkes

Aishvarya Arora called us from Queens, NY.

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"Naturalization Test" by Aishvarya Arora

There are few mornings like this –
When the tumble day slows
and the sweltering July heat subsides;
when memories of last night’s fire show
resonate with a still-first sense of wonder.

The footfall of Fatherhood feels fine underneath;
I am comfortable here, at peace with a
stirring that has often lingered in the quiet process of thinking.
My daughter turns her eyes aware,
Expecting the dance of color in the thick night sky,
and utters with perfect sincerity the answer her mother and I
had first provided to her own plea for more “firewoooorrrks!”
“Later, next year,” she repeats.

She seems to understand –
just as she is profoundly unaware that stirring
in her mommy’s womb just now, the slightest mobility towards life
of her first sibling yet to be born.

The sky creeps thoughtfully, 
grateful it seems that the booms have subsided,
for now – until “Later, next year.”
The clouds pass lightly as we look upward
to dream of a better place.
This unsummer in its brilliant disguise –
cool, elusive, uncharted.

The tongues amongst the people
do not complain of lasting heat
nor of humidity.
Instead, the cool, soft morning greets them,
allowing children to play.

————————————–

Dan J. Kirk called us from Pittsburgh, PA.

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"This is Poetry Time" by Dan J. Kirk

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

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 exist.
I’m having revenge fantasies. The taste of blood.
That’s deeply brilliant.
I would destroy him. For you.
I’m in love with everything.
I prefer to move in silence.

————————————–

Stephanie Valente called us from Brooklyn, NY.

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"Revenge Fantasy" by Stephanie Valente

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 tattoos
of 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 thank you 
and he does 
and suddenly I’m ensconced in the leaves, enveloped by the tree.
I pick the plums one at a time, each a little ball of orange red fruit.
That’s all for now, I say, and he starts to let go— then reconsiders.
He pulls the branch back down
takes matters into his own hands. His wide fingers 
grab fistfuls of fruit and drop them in my bag. 
Just as many fall to the ground and there are errant leaves and twigs,
all component parts of the tree are now there, in my bag, in pieces.
What a joy, to seize something entirety in pursuit of the one sweet part, 
the part that could be crushed by a closing palm.
What a delight, to move with abandon, to ignore precision,
to choose clear cutting over particular picking. 
Could my own hands claim what’s in front of them so confidently? 
Could they take so completely?
I run into the street to catch the tram, 
whose yellow doors are already swinging open.

————————————–

Ashira Morris called us from Sofia, Bulgaria.

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"Street Plums" by Ashira Morris

"autogynephilia is the lie they made up to trick trans girls into hating themselves"
by Penelope Jeanne Brannen

i’m a sexy hot complicated bitch
and sometimes i lean in real close
to the mirror and i breathe hard 
until i feel my own breath turning
back at me from the glass fogging it
until the it starts to heat up
so that when i finally begin kissing
my sexy hot complicated bitch
of a reflection she feels warm
and hard against me and when
i press my hands up into hers 
just because we can’t thread our fingers 
and just because we can’t feel 
the softness of our breastforms
against our own chests i feel on 
this side of that hard plate a new love 
and even though i know you’re not 
supposed to open your eyes when 
you’re kissing someone even if that 
someone’s yourself sometimes
i like to take a peek at her 
and her eyes are still closed 
and she looks peaceful enough 
until i pull away and her eyes open 
and the hurt reflected back at me 
aches like a teenage suicide attempt


---------------------------------------

Penelope Jeanne Brannen called us from Cleveland, OH.

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"autogynephilia is the lie they made up to trick trans girls ..." by Penelope Jeanne Brannen

i fall into the opening between subject and object 
and call it a condition of possibility. 
when i speak only the ceiling listens. 
sometimes it moans. 
if i am a body let it be the sound his lips make. 
there is no word in my language for this. 
sometimes my kookum begins to cry 
and a world falls out. 
grieve is the name i give to myself. 
i carve it into the bed frame. 
i am make-believe. 
this is an archive. 
it hurts to be a story. 
i am the boundary between reality and fiction. 
it is a ghost town. 
you dreamt me out of existence. 
you are at once a map to nowhere and everywhere. 
yesterday was an optical illusion. 
i kiss a stranger and give him a middle name. 
i call this love. 
it lasts for exactly twenty minutes. 
i chase after that feeling. 
which is to say: 
i want to almost not exist. 
almost is the closest i can get to the sky. 
heaven is a wormhole. 
i first found it in another man's armpit.
last night i gave birth to a woman and named her becoming. 
she is four cree girls between the ages of 10 and 14 from northern saskatchewan. 
we are a home movie i threw out by accident. 
all that is left is the signified.
people die that way.

---------------------------------------

Billy-Ray Belcourt called us from Oxford, England.
More about the poet: http://nakinisowin.wordpress.com

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"GAY INCANTATIONS" by Billy-Ray Belcourt

"when you see a mountain coming,
get out of it's way."
my uncle, six-two and oxen
told me after clipping my wing.

i learn at an early age
to be a black man
is to see a black man
and fear his size, momentum.

to love a black man is to see
his shape and surrender.
i lay myself down
on his threshing floor

say uncle,
and await apocalypse
across my arms. when two gods
enter a room, one is humbled.

but there are no walls,
no floors in space.
so i say lover
when i meet him there.


---------------------------------------

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"say uncle" by Wimpy AF

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 is ending soon it just thinks 

it can wait out having to pay 
            the delivery fee and this is just 
like me to go on and on nodding 

                                    to the tune of ephemera in my head 
                        without letting go I can count on one 
                                    hand how many fingers I have lifted

            to speak to my grandmother or 
times I even perused a bible yet I 
            could tell you more about how 

                        many times I opened my mouth 
                                    for favor this week alone.


————————————–

Olatunde Osinaike called us from Nashville, TN.

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“Some Synonym of Practice I Am” by Olatunde Osinaike

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 - benevolent demigod me who only knew enough to tear out earthy pieces of the woods and shove them in.

Love is often a tearing away - open heart surgery featuring pieces of us that don’t fit - and a partner who can play dead really well.

I played house - made a time machine too - went back in time - made mistakes - I must have - how else did playing house get so hard all of a sudden - why else would everything be my fault?

I preached in two different churches at the age of eight. I forgot the God is love part - was too busy memorizing bible verses - writing fire and brimstone sermons.

Whenever I was on my way to an ass whooping - I always wished I was someone else - someone strong enough to put the switch down.

Did you know hide and seek isn’t fun at all - if one person suddenly decides they don’t wanna play anymore?

When you grow up and the woods can’t hide you - you learn to disappear on the inside - you try and make yourself a fortress.

Best I could muster was a jar of ripped up roots and leaves - with a bug that knew how small he was - who was much loved - until the day he wanted out.


————————————–

James Barrett Rodehaver called us from Dallas, TX.

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“The sticks.” by James Barrett Rodehaver

A man in a powder blue suit
offered to tell me my future
on Olive Avenue. When I tried 
to say no, he said Baby, please,
in a way that told me that he 
might know something that
I didn’t, so I held out my palm.

I used to hold out the same palm
on the playground for other girls
to read. They would tell me that 
I was destined to have five kids
and a loving husband. Maybe a 
mini van. They told me my future
with such certainty that it was 
difficult not to see some truth,
some sincerity, some genuine 
desire to wish a happy future
upon each other. So I believed them.

The man on Olive said he could see
Los Angeles and its sprawl. He
could see me there, too, but he 
wouldn’t tell me what I was doing
without another five dollars.
I looked happy, though, he said. 
Happy in Los Angeles and 
laughing in the sun. There,
in Fresno, I sought to find
an intersection of these futures.


————————————–

Mariah Bosch called us from Fresno, CA.


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"Reading Lines" by Mariah Bosch

yeah i’ve got a lighter. can fix your filter. give you honey stick secrets and light tight roll laughter when you call me blue dream like your favorite strain like your favorite character ramona you know the blue of your dreams? yeah they’re both pierced. few things hurt so good like a needle. addict in a cute way. smoker with a toothbrush. dreamer with insomnia. liar and a poet. dream girl without problems. will ignore your worst for a sprinkle of the same. won’t shut the cartoon off till you ask for the remote or a shaved head. will lay alone with you and all of the dirty dishes. or i can wake up pretty if you want me to. i can be your party now and your home in the morning. feed you jewels of deep red pomegranates and suck the stains from the bed sheets. let you call me by any name you want when you fuck me. lick your wounds so you don’t have to. pretend you don’t have them until you don’t. and i will say goodbye before the jump so you don’t have to see me splatter. or if you want, i could rewrite the closing scene. i could change this to a happy ending. i can make you everything you want. i will make me anything if you ask me to.

————————————–

Taylor Jaczin called us from St. Petersburg, FL.


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"Manic Pixie POV" by Taylor Jaczin

remember bodies at night 

how they glow 

how they bend into us 

like refracted light


the memory of where a body was 

after it has left its phosphorescence


you cocoon into 

the spaces around things


find yourself 

in auburn eyes and hazel skin 

the red that flows from you


you learn that aloneness is a softness 

a sky that pulls you through


you see bodies as they are 

things that love you and then stop


when you wake up it’s heavy water 

write down the deep green blue feelings 

like paua shells


there is a pale existing in your head 

a light moving in your hair 

behind a colour


in the lunar month you return home 

the whenua moves its arms up to greet you 

climb up the hill to see the faraway beach 

feel lonely like mislaid keys


it’s good to be there in the quiet 

saying to yourself i’m real i’m real 

as the feelings inside shrink red into shape


————————————–

Stacey Teague called us from Clonakilty, Ireland.

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"Whero" by Stacey Teague

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


————————————–

Zachary Goldberg called us from Oakland, CA.

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"Moon" by Zach Goldberg

On April 11th, 2019, Israel sends a space probe to the moon. It explodes on impact.

BORN of Holy Space, she is sister

to stone. knows each smooth defense 

littering occupied Ground. Holy

Ground. she whispers stories of how we built

our homes / laying stone gentle atop one another

 dabke  hard on soil 

sending stories of how children see if stones,

too, float in the dead sea. 

israel sends a space probe to the moon & it explodes on impact. 

LISTEN. the moon is pro-Palestine.

moon remembers when she was part of the earth / remembers when land was one / craters filled with water waiting to be named holy / a people knowing what it always was, tending to orchards with twisted roots older than sea level / sung prayers tucked into breakfasts of bread and cheese / throats uneroded / calling on our daughters / ya ‘amar ya ‘amar ya banat al ‘amar / asking of us beauty / strength  

holy earth sends stories of children / gripping rocks so hard their life lines become granite rings.

Children scratching at empire / criminalized. what is a blemish to an empire? man-made death machines plummet into the surface of the moon / scratch for conquest.

o holy Ground. those who separated us will not be forgiven. 

there is no blemish to her light.  in eulogy of the Children who have joined the stars 

she fights back

————————————–

Summer Farah called us from Oakland, CA.

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"the moon is pro-palestine" by Summer Farah

Poetry via voicemail. Missed calls you need to hear.

Open submissions accepted.
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