My mother’s half brother wore a blue herringbone tweed jacket with padded elbows to her funeral / The kind worn by a caricature of a substitute teacher or traveling salesman or a freshly sober high school dropout / He told us to call him Uncle Loser & used to whisper to us in the back of his trailer the same three ghost stories every summer / The one about the man who underachieves his way back to the kiddie table when the adults start pairing themselves into euchre teams / The one about a man who drags a rusted shopping cart behind him as he haunts the parking lot of the abandoned shopping malls that line the freeway access roads / The one about his teenage classmates who drank themselves into their senior year & went missing while camping in the woods not far from here / Uncle Loser taught his parrot all the best curse words to use on everyone except grandma & his daughters / We thought that damn bird was gonna outlive us all but she died early from lung cancer / Family Tradition / For every set of us one must annihilate himself farther faster / Uncle Loser surprised his in-laws by looking like a goddamn college professor next to the cremains of my mother / My dad was so impressed by the burnout’s newfound glamour he offered to buy a round of drinks for them before remembering that side of the family was newly sober / Uncle Loser used to let me spin around in his daughter’s tutu in front of an antique mirror in the back of his trailer / He was glad someone enjoyed his embroidery. 


Ask Your Uncle to let you take a tutu home | Turn to page 2
Spin until “Genius of Love” starts to skip | Turn to page 3

————————————–

RJ Equality Ingram called us from Portland, OR.

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"Uncle Loser The Knight of Swords" by RJ Equality Ingram

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

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

I dreamed of a canoe, and of the two of us: I was new on the lake. Streaming through the murk, the cellar scent of blue and brown water, and you, my new love, saying nothing, only rowing us backwards deftly. At the lake’s deepest point: a miniature goose—a full grown adult, though not five inches high, resting on an island of ice, mid-June. Tenderly I scooped it. Its feet were frozen in a lump of ice, but it stood on my palm as quiet and unmoving as you, who waited with paused oars, seeming not to care much about the goose, but caring about my care. I rubbed my fingers over the ruly bird’s webs to warm them, and the ice melted all shiny and dewy as the goose stared into the distance, patiently or bluely, I could not tell. The goose free, we moved on. 

//

Tuesday night I felt a stabbing at the bottom of my foot; ignoring it I woke in the morning to the same pain and could not run. You sat with me in the dining room and took my foot in your palm and tried to maneuver the splinter out, spaded with your tweezers the dip in the soft spot of the sole, right beneath the ball, asking, “Does this hurt?” I wanted to answer, “Yes, and I love you,” but I could not tell you I loved you while you held in your hands something so rude as my dirty and wounded foot. You could not remove the splinter, but with time it came loose on its own, or else the soft cheek of my sole grew hard enough to enclose the shard.

————————————–

Devan Murphy called us from Pittsburgh, PA.

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"The Goose: A Diptych" by Devan Murphy

People fell in love during the fall of the Roman Empire 

and people were falling in love in 1930s Germany, the Nazis were coming into power and regular German citizens were going on dates and falling in love.

I have new tires on my car so I feel invincible driving to you through the snow, 
I am driving to you and a song is on the radio that reminds me of you 
and I’m passing all these other cars because I have new tires and it’s snowing so hard but 
maybe I’m in love and I have to remind myself

that happy people can still die in a car crash. 

There was happiness in 1930s Germany and at the end of Rome, too.

Falling in love doesn’t do anything for the climate crisis, falling in love won't save democracy. It’s late-stage capitalism, it’s the fading days of the Anthropocene, 
new tires don’t save me from other drivers and love doesn’t save us from anything really, 
but isn’t it nice, for a minute in the snow, to feel so wildly protected?

————————————–

Jill McLaughlin called us from Portland, ME.

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"Poem Written in iPhone Note via Voice to Text While Driving" by Jill McLaughlin

"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

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

Chocolate Polynesian brown was beckoned 
to the land of the long white cloud
to work in factories, freezing works, docks,
was beckoned to work hard,
send money back to islands of hibiscus and frangipani

But chocolate Polynesian brown got swallowed,
digested in a stomach churning with acid-filled hate
The outcome? That other shade of brown

//

But dawn, 
because you covered your eyes with the dark hands of night
batons bashed on doors, 
scaring pregnant women, given barely enough time 
to dress while dogs spat their barks through bared teeth

But dawn,
Because you hid behind the horizon
torches blazed, blinding,
breaking sleep and families
as parents were taken from screaming kids
to be jailed then charged then sent back to the islands

Dawn,
because you were silent,
because all murmurings were silenced.

————————————–

Cindy Kurukaanga called us from Aotearoa, New Zealand.

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"The Dawn Raids" by Cindy Kurukaanga

Poetry via voicemail. Missed calls you need to hear.

Open submissions accepted.
Guidelines at http://voicemailpoems.org

"Uncle Loser The Knight of Swords" by RJ Equality Ingram

VOICEMAIL POEMS