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

Today a pomegranate broke open on the supermarket floor, & sucked the breath out of my mouth while I coughed up red seeds. I want to be more like the Olde Times Buffet across the street from Publix with the big sign that says “best quality food available,” but you hold me back with a hand in my gut. Imagine if I knew myself so well; to say, yes, of what is available to me in the panhandle of Florida I am doing my best. Which is to say, of course not everything is great, and yes some parts of me are questionable. I could tell you which, but I'd rather not. Some parts of me are good, even in ways you might find surprising. This is a fine way to think of yourself if you are a buffet in Tallahassee, but what if you're human, like me? What if, like me, you hit a pedestrian with your car because you were annoyed at the driver behind you? What if you saw two cardinals in the road, one couldn't fly, and you circled back to help them but got scared? And now I think of the cardinals all the time, the birds themselves, the one flying awkwardly between his companion and the side of the road, but also the symbol of them and me, the color red, a hand in my gut. I read one time that two neutron stars were so bewitched by you that they became one big angry cloud of gold and platinum. All the happy scientists and howling wind can't save me from you. Can’t keep my dog from swallowing a toy squeaker whole & dying.

————————————–

Claire Tames Nelson called us from Savannah, GA.

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"For Craving" by Claire Tames Nelson

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

Make me into your tech girl. Teach me your modern ways, a New Order. I’ve been a poet so long I only know the fog through the trees by your house. Know only how you reach for my hip in your sleep. I wrote the first draft of this poem in zeros and ones for you. I cry at your parties, Tech Boy. I’m sorry. And again, on your deck at midnight in spring. Last night, you found me cross legged on your kitchen floor. I was memorizing the patterns in the wood. Everyone retired for the night after swimming and drinking. Your face now bathed in stove light as you ask what’s wrong, please come back to bed. But my legs are no longer mine. This room, my hands, it’s all made up. I’m seeing double.  We’re a couple of traitors. You and me, the brimming shot glasses. I welcomed violence back like a war hero because it looked a lot like love. And then I saw you across the room and shouldered the guilt of wanting. The doom made a home of me, stared back in mirrors weeping. You pulled me into the bathroom after it was all over. I thought you were going to kiss me but it was just the drugs instead. We turned each other in at the middle where every story starts getting good. A corrupted file kind of love. Ignored the trespasses and called it forgiveness. Called it even. Outlaws bonded in their wrongdoing: if you go this way, I’ll go that way. I offered you a cigarette the summer you were grieving. It was all I had to give. We were on the roof again. You hugged me so tight I was terrified of who might see. I thought we could hardwire the domesticity I wanted. I waited in line with you at Costco. Helped wheel out the new freezer you just bought and realized I never knew you until I saw you in the frozen food aisle with a basket full of frozen shrimp. There you are again in the garage outfitted with a tool chest and a big TV and a place for me to sit and watch you tinker. You never knew me either. My sheet music and piano hands, my books and phone therapy sessions I had in your driveway. You’re just like me, you know that, Tech Boy? My birthday twin, my December baby, we went too hard and never made it out to the other side. I am still conjuring what tomorrow looks like without you. This poem my Hail Mary, a prayer inside of a prayer. I kept trying to leave so you closed the gates. You drunk dialed my number and kissed my hand when I came back. I wanted to be a good tech girl so bad for you, Tech Boy. I turned to these blank pages when you shut me out. I murdered to be there with you. I ran over a creature on my way to your house and kept going.

————————————–

Gabrielle Caggiano called us from Baltimore, MD.

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"Tech Boy" by Gabrielle Caggiano

Girl don’t think it
Tardive dyskinesia; tardive dyskinesia
Calendar calendar calendar calendar
Tardive dyskinesia
Synesthesia I think blue I think shades of blue
Girl stop he doesn’t want you
Got onna plane
Got onna plane
Girl stop
Look up at the calendar don’t think calendar
Don’t think it
Maybe the therapist says maybe think maybe
Maybe everything will break and ruin
Maybe it won’t he says
So what if you’re not perfect so what
Everything doesn’t have to be so yes or no
Yes I think that’s true
Say the longest word you can
Say the longest most escape you can’t stop
The most always the most right I think of it
So many shades of blue
Citrus blues
Citrus is a vibe in every sense
A perfect blue sense
The sky collapsing until I’m outside of it
Think how big the universe is
The longest biggest sky until it’s not sky
And it’s not so black and white is it
It’s not so right
What if everything does blow up
It’s blowing up anyway everywhere infinite
And that’s not a bad thing
Dark dark blue
Don’t get so stuck on that

————————————–

Dana Jaye Cadman called us from the beachy suburbs outside of New York City.

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"Obsession" by Dana Jaye Cadman

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

No dating until you’re thirty 
was the rule my parents erected

like a concrete wall built for destruction.
It was the reason my first boyfriend
had to lead me in darkness through brush
with the canvas of our Converse soaking 
in grass dewed by yesterday’s rain.
Under a tree, I discovered the electricity
of my breasts, how nerve pulsations
can write letters dipped in honeysuckle
from nipple through spine to clit.
Metamorphosis of lips to portals 
opening worlds all goo and lightning.
The Venusian taught me 
how soft hands can bend flesh to fire

and how a boy always finds a way
To leap over a wall.

————————————–

Anmol Priya Desai called us from Tucson, AZ.

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"Immigrants" by Anmol Priya Desai

Poetry via voicemail. Missed calls you need to hear.

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

"A Patient Record (excerpt)" by Mary Zhou

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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