VOICEMAIL POEMS - Winter 2018

I set down my flaming sword long enough to stare into
a hunting trip photo at my Grandfather's 
memorial. It shows two men, and him between them in
a dress and wig-hilarious joke (everyone
laughed), "abomination" an Uncle
scoffs casual-like now, tells story: "that's the ugliest woman
I ever saw" man driving by says to man 

in passenger seat (everyone laughs). 
See: sadness and shame felt in my painted
toenails hidden in socks, the tie too tight around my neck, 
clueless compliments about my long hair and hoops.

Retell the story a different way: at 10, a buck strung for skinning
from the eaves; the droppings he cut out and put in my palm.
I can never breathe in church, but this morning I took communion
for the first time in 9 years, for the old man-God knows why.

Over his grave beside his stillborn first daughter's,
I become the hospital where he died-Queen of
the Valley (think meanest motherfucker: full crown 
of antlers on my head, long locks of weeping 
willow dyed with blood trailing in the wind, time
turned back on itself, a naked Eve naming all the animals).

Pulling my dress off the hanger, I bear witness: 
the empty center of the universe like a liver spot; 
wind in my hair, sun on my bare shoulders;
and under the ground, hidden in the urn,
his miserable ashes in drag.

*Title quoted from the obituary for James E. Fidler published in the Napa Valley Register, 08/28/2017 (http://napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/james-e-fidler/article_65807aa0-9a66-5a83-a859-8be03d18c1c7.html).


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"A SHINING EXAMPLE OF HOW AN HONEST, KIND, STRONG, AND RESPONSIBLE MAN LIVES HIS LIFE" by Dana Whtvr

sonnet for Trans Lifeline & February 2017
& for Kai

It snowed last week & the clouds slept lower.
I wonder where your body went without you,
who unraveled it & what came falling 
from their mouths. I think of you; a weighted 
sky; dirt, loosening itself in welcome; 
what it is to bury: to deem ready 
to give back; to kill: to call a body 
just a body, to turn to flesh & name 
the rest, the lost, the still of us fever
dream prophecies of flightless birds 
about the heavens they can't reach. We know 
the sky was falling long before these days. 
It's just, it seems, the ground thaws out softer 
for us, now. Hungry or buckling or kind. 


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"Sonnet for Trans Lifeline & February 2017" by Sam Rush

Klu klux what?
I'm a such
A tool for America 
Hands scraped raw
Hammered deep into cotton
Fly up and it rains gold
I'm a Midas
But was forced to turn
Inanimate objects into fortune
To fields of green picked
Over and rotten
I'm a supposed
Dead used problem
Both birth and demise
Alleged
Between trying to kill
And forgetting about
I'ma question 
A poking to see if I writhe
How much can a country
Heap on a back until
It concaves into a nail
America's only seeming quandary
You jealous?
//
Hey Klu 
Can I call you Klu
What you going to do 
With that cross besides 
Make me laugh
A tongue is a flame
A black body is a cross
You worship, me?
Little ol' burnt thing
Used to be pick to your ninny
Now every time you lynch me
You clone me
//
Behind you!
Issa Me
Oh! You thought the 
Noose would kill me
No, no,no,no,no,no
I mean not really me 
But another me
Remember the clone
The string up 
and teleport
So every molecular thing
Served up to slaughter
Still lives structurally
Same skin and everything
But equipped with the 
Memory of your evil
I do strange things with memory
Like let it drip into a knife
But don't worry
I haven't breathed here enough
To know how to use it
//
I don't get the sheet. I never got the sheet. I mean sure back then it was just as much about costuming fear as it was a mask, but now it's not even necessary.  We have lived long enough to spot a racist. A white person could yawn and I could tell you if they whisper nigger under their breath in boardrooms or if they loudly proclaim their lust for my blood. It's all the same to me, all engineers of the type ecosystem that thirsts for black death so take off those gosh-darn sheets, join us, reveal how easily you slip into assembly, you'd be surprised.


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"Taunts to the Klan" by Kirwyn Sutherland

my head is full of blood steamed like latte foam
pressing open the seams in my skull, 
burning through folds in my brain like a shot luge.

my head is the generating station in the delaware river,
developed into luxury condos with beds that fill the whole homes.
my head is a smoking suite with smoke stains in
the corners of the ceilings 
and the ice cubes smell like the smoke stains
and that is disappointing in an expected way.

and i'm laying in my underwear in every single bed,
rolling and sighing in the sheets
and taking notes
how do i feel here
what did i do here
how was the bounce

maybe a man is there smelling sweaty 
or like flat champagne sticky about the nape
and i like to feel wanted
or at least i like to be paid what i told that feeling i wanted.
or at the very least, i'm shoveling black sand into some deficit,
punching out, and watching the direct deposit cartwheel in at 3am.

i am trying to convince everyone that this is what i do,
i lay in the beds and turn inputs to outputs
and i go out with my friends when i feel like they miss me
and i make wry jokes about my own self-worth and my lonesomeness
and they laugh and i write about the things that they laugh about in language opaque enough that i don't even feel it anymore.

and i am naked looking out a big window in a luxury condo
where my spirit is hung on a bamboo hanger like a bathrobe.
of course it is the 4am hour where nothing is provocative any more. i read a magazine article in some design rag
about the fire hydrant pumping station across the river.
without it, they'd never have built the station or turned the station into condos.
the fire would have burned in the middle of the river and the lights would all ball-gag themselves.

i feel very bad for the factory. does he like to gorge himself
in big sucks and swallows from the river just so that
people can tap it from hundreds of holes miles away?


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"whelp" (after aziza barnes) by zach blackwood

All soldiers believe Charms in their MREs are foul luck, bad juju,
more than just a dark talisman, a virtual death sentence.
Patrols have been called off if some dirtbag private
straight out of basic
tested fate by peeling open a pack 
of the generic Jolly Ranchers knockoffs that bring nothing but doom.

Everyone on the FOB heard stories about how Charms
were a malediction that summoned malefactors who
felled soldiers with sniper fire, mortar blasts and IED ambushes.
Marines supposedly even once threw Charms at the enemy in a firefight
to even skewed, candy-altered odds.

That's why you never ingest Charms.
That's why you cast them away theatrically,
make a real show of it.
That's why you have to observe the whole superstition.

We all choke down MREs.
That's a universal experience.
Some have Charms; some don't.
It's all chance.
It's purely random, who's charmed or cursed by fate.

Likewise, it makes no sense who randomly
gets killed, maimed, blown up, torn apart,
out there, outside the wire.

There's no rhyme or reason 
behind which soldiers go down,
who gets battlefield crosses with helmets, rifles, boots and dog tags,
who succumbs to PTSD, traumatic brain injury, moral injury, any war wound.

Maybe some stale, rotten hard candy 
could make sense of it all.
Maybe Charms are just imbued a significance they never earned
in a senseless chaos devoid of any meaning,
in an abysmal void that invites lore.


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"Charms" by Joseph S. Pete

"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

Poetry via voicemail. Missed calls you need to hear.

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Guidelines at http://voicemailpoems.org