Saying I love you in my mother tongue is impossible. My mother never loved me in words. She gave up a continent for me, its contents traded for a feathered hope of better. For me, she went to scrub the floors in houses we could not afford, came home and scrubbed our floors, as well, then shopped, and cooked, and mended, and then scrubbed some more. The days all slipped into the slit between the scrubbing and the cooking, like errant peas dried in the gap between the cupboard and the stove, and there was never time for words. So now, my mother tongue sticks in my throat like the smell of bleach and cumin. I've had to learn three other languages just to find words to talk of love, and even so, sometimes I'll just offer to hem your trousers. ————————————– Ella B. Winters called us from England, UK. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

The bells like a leviathan breach the membrane of the liquid dark, tumbling forth like a vanguard incited by adrenaline and the call of drumbeats. The God Paradox States: 1. If God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, He has the power and also the desire to end evil. Through the open window, the January air bites at the alveoli lodged deep behind my sternum; moonbeams litter the asphalt in geometric shapes refracted by a million prisms all the way down. 2. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He has the knowledge and also the power to end evil. 3. If God is omniscient and omnibenevolent, He has the knowledge and also the desire to end evil The night is austere, the world holding its collective breath for the dawn of sunrise and the gift of another day; I drive by the specter of the old cemetery, and the bells continue to toll calling the faithful back to God. 4.) Evil exists. 5.) Therefore… My unfinished Ph.D.in Nietzschean philosophy floats into my forebrain like an air bubble. “God is dead,” I tell the bells, recalling my catechisms from a former lifetime with a sardonicism that feels almost like mourning. “This is not for God,” the bells tell me. “This is just for you.” I drive and I listen to the notes dancing through the dark on the way to my ears – the chimes and the melody and the perfect fifths – as the night opens up ahead of me and the rest of my life beckons from right down the road. ————————————– Shannon Frost Greenstein called us from Jenkintown, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

the vines awaken to greet the ripening day the sun climbs to its zenith scattering darkness from every corner you fold your sorrowing hands across your belly only yesterday there was a heartbeat your weary body tightens under the blaze of light yet your soul remains untouched by its ray ————————————– Aleksandra Jovičić Đinović called us from Serbia. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

money runs like blood through the big american corpse my big american corpse takes the subway chews the same piece of gum too long like cud like cows we mill in the smoke between tracks eyes wide and sightless our big american mouths follow hunger to hunger won’t see the plainclothes cop until it's too late won’t see him put his hands on a dirty arm won’t remember where that arm goes when it disappears into the non-place of a blue and white van sent to that other island where they take bodies we fear as if a person could vanish in a burst of white light as if a person were a problem we could solve do you believe we are innocent like animals like characters inserted for comic relief do you believe when the last brown face disappears from your block you will finally feel safe do you believe to feel safe is the same as happiness do you believe everything you’re told did you believe you’d lose nothing when you asked the machine to think for you to write your wedding vows and grocery lists to tell you when to smile when to jump how high did you start to believe it could not turn its face back to us that it would not show its teeth to quiet beasts fawning at its feet it’s hard for me to say ‘us’ even when I know it’s the right word even when I know I’m the ghost in the shell we’re the ghosts it’s one shell and just when I believe I can’t stand another moment alive moving like oil like money through this lifeless body my body tries to survive a man clips my shoulder he steadies me a thin hand dusty knuckles he smiles before he turns to face the little black box from his pocket heat of his hand still on my shoulder place our eyes met in the air human easy place where his dark american face meets my pale american face meets wind pouring out hot from the tunnel and the man waits next to me now his beautiful dark cheeks and his beautiful dark eyes move beneath their purple lids and the nod and nod of his head to what I can't hear the two of us wait for the train and the two of us wait like fledglings on a high branch for the moment his face turns back to my face and there is no face left between us ————————————– Birch Wiley called us from Brooklyn, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I heard the first note on a train out of town A certain je ne sais quoi was ignited With the flair of a madman, sprung out of my chair Slammed emergency stop and alighted Waltzed up and down the boarded up boulevard Enjoyed the sensation of the silent street Underscored by the tune of a tuba at noon Which put the soul back into my feet Spinning round to the downtown dive bar A subterranean musical flavour A menagerie of brass bells and ornaments Each a new spectacle to savour She’s a saxophone on a Sunday night A rollercoaster of instinctive grooves Dazzling, golden and just out of sight I’m inspired by the way that she moves Our passionate energy rises and simmers She whispers to me at the end of the song A paradise blossoms from the words that I hear- ‘If music be the food of love, play on’ ————————————– Lena Hadley called us from Hampshire, UK. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

This time I’m breast. Face down, breasts hanging as still as I could be. I brought my breasts, body, here, it feels like. I am not exactly my body today. I remember choosing dying in my sleep during the childhood game, as if we could predict or choose that kind of ending. I repeat the soft animal of your body – it hurts to forget the geese, Mary Oliver’s name, to rest my middle on a plastic support, even if covered with a towel. In the waiting room, I don’t think of Elizabeth Bishop and the horrifying breasts in the National Geographic she read in another waiting room as a child. I am an adult, reading about park rangers working with beavers to save the forests through dams. To trust an animal, to trust ourselves. To trust that nature can be contained. I am sure I will die of cancer. Does this stave off the car accidents? ————————————– Chloe Yelena Miller called us from Washington, DC. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Dear moon child of the Universe wake up and lift your golden feet & wave your hand's glory to your placid disposition however humble it may be without surrendering your human dignity For you have the worthy right to be present here void of dark imaginings of who's over your halo & beneath the sole of your feet Dear child see here as loud as the echoes of the walls of your heart not as broken dreams shattered by tricks, lies and politics of many men who are here enabled with authority-power to cancel the dreamers & nightcrawlers As a treader of this path stomping on eggshells moonwalking on the surface of every mountains without whisper or tell... Sing your songs loud to your silence & to the silence around you to halt all silences Even though you encounter defeat & the unfair blows of life knocks you down to earth flat — facedown! Beat your wings & rise from the dusty fall & wear your blackened eye with pride... and stand firmly in the sun with a will tattooed across your chest... fearless, deathless as the kill with shining sword and shield ready to battle... (to bury the dead in you) willing to give life another benefit of doubt For the dream is louder than the noisy confusion of life Blaze it... don't smoke it! ————————————– Uchechukwu Onyedikam called us from Lagos, Nigeria. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Do you remember that summer I spent trying to catch your snort in a jar? That snort you’d bury under a cough every time. A boy breaking through the drywall of a man. I wrote twenty-six poems about you. I gave you a warehouse and turpentine on your cuffs and night air in your gaze. But you wore yellow baseball caps, socks with sandals. Minnesota stamped in cotton, the blockiest state. Remember that time I poured boiling water into your roommate’s soda-lime glass? Not a clean break. A web. Tiny cracks all through the body and it just fell apart in your hands. Anyway, I'm on a podcast now, did you know? They asked me why I built the AI tool. I said I saw a gap I wanted to bridge. Because students weren't watching the lectures. Retention. Engagement. The host asked if the burden of responsibility should fall on individuals and I said no it's structural, and the right model could fix it. And I was so earnest, you would’ve slapped your left knee, cracked that snort open, and called me a sap. When I was beachcombing in Aruba I found a rock shaped like a brain and it reminded me of you. I held it to my ear the way you’d hold a shell, expecting the wild heat of your heartbeat from that morning after. But there was only the aural tragedy of the tide — the same wave, crashing into my ankles, over and over. I could build another reason for you to orbit my desk. I could buy us another summer with the jar open. I’ll bring the rock. Put your ear to the other side. Listen— I learned things in the specific key of your voice and called it professional development. I rearranged an entire curriculum so you could walk past my door on Tuesdays. I was always making something beautiful and useless, always pressing that rock to your side of the wall, wasn’t I? ————————————– Marissa M. Zhu called us from Detroit, MI. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Do birds fear heights, the way we fear living? Pigeons above all, always so low to the ground, and squirrels, not avian but aerial, crossed wires with cheeks full of preparedness, We risk so much to prepare for so little, The mourning dove is watching from a higher branch this evening. Their wings are the green of the faraway part of the sky during thunder, They strike it rich on a wire, before the mute storm, The atmosphere bursts like a train through the neighborhood, The train has come to see what it can pummel, but everything has been cleared for its path, It is an arrow, Just the air breaks, and the sparks flick themselves until they burn on air and die. Composed of listening light, orchestral sleep is prescribed, Upon every eyelid, over goose-down or under bridge, The green pretense knows no leisure, Our dreams underneath its weight are dastardly, but doctor’s orders are rarely easy, Even the even-handed ones, It's only Wednesday when the sky mimics the diamond’s light, cupped over my finger. All things, almost, you can never have cupped long enough to hold, So love becomes a marriage, and lightening a sound, so late, so late, In one baroque spring, could have been this year or sixty-five million before, Dirt’s veins strike it rich. ————————————– Vasiliki Argyris called us from Philadelphia, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

be still listen slip through the needle eye of silence. leave behind your preference for black licorice, your talent for word games your grandfather’s watch….your hair, your skin, your teeth enter naked as bones ask the furred, the feathered, the finned how to ford the river, how to scale the rock cliff how to spin your flax to gold feel the floor beneath your absence, the wide planks of the old house that were once proud firs breathing out cool fog, touch the skies those trees held up stand before gods that are strangers whose language is harsh in your ears and do not flinch trust kindness when you find it- the flesh surrounding the apple’s seed the apple carried in the beak of a raven become the raven’s fingered wings flying through time sifting wounds and wonders become your one unbearable wound cry tears that freeze in six-pointed geometry then fall and fall until they smooth mountains be the unmistakable snowflake that launches the avalanche and buries the village become the thaw uncover a memory of wholeness drip that sweet clean water on the growing vine of generations the vine that will someday flower with the twin stars of a baby’s open hands a baby who will cry out to you from a dense and troubled darkness and you will answer: heal child, the way is in your blood. ————————————– Sophia Rosenberg called us from Lasqueti Island, BC, Canada. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems