ài yɑ, I gasped in a foreign language he laughed, taking off my socks toes without nail polish, he kissed the sweat beads on my back without a photographer a woman in white dress a man in linen suit held the turquoise river and their breath fit bodies running shirtless under the sun poured molten gold made me stare, ài yɑ he left before we wrinkle ————————————– Elena Wu called us from Chicago, IL. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Warning: do not think this bed will bear your weight across the bay. What holds you at night may not carry you in the morning. The air might already be leaking. It may not be what it seems. Run your hands along the seams. Check every fold for hidden faults. Feel for well-meaning pokes and jabs. Caution: be wary most of holes. puncture holes/nail holes/eyeholes/keyholes/pinholes/drainage holes/armholes/loopholes/pie holes/watering holes/hellholes/wormholes/rabbit holes Help with finding the holes: place your ears to the surface. Listen for sounds of escaping. The culprit may be close to quiet, whispering in the farthest corners. Be cautious about what you hear. It may not be the truth. None of this will be worth the tides of sleepless nights, bailing out the water rushing over your dreams. ————————————– Kathleen Granados called us from New York, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

BERLIN (Reuters) - A swan has fallen in love with a plastic swan-shaped paddleboat on a pond in the German town of Muenster and has spent the past three weeks flirting with the vessel five times its size, a sailing instructor said Friday. He's not half nuts, this German swan, to love Something so near the actual, you might squint from shore, squishing sand beneath your toes, to see its broad white belly part the shining green, neck angled always toward the clouds deflecting every antic of its frenzied, mini-suitor. This happens, right? Who among us with a single red corpuscle hasn't dug in and waited the whole doomed thing to its conclusion, wanting some chill beauty to paddle its slow turn toward us on the man-made lake? In your case, not a Muenster tourist boat, let's hope, but more like the narcissist with lovely eyes and a voice to unzip things to, or the one that cut the right profile but sank like a Petoskey stone. But still, in spite of tearstains, sucker punches, fists to the glass jaw, the dumb heart beats, and tries again. See, there he goes, beak agog and hissing at the rival birds, wings spread to seem more menacing, black webbed feet paddling frantic through the algae. Then night sets and a silver moon beams down on bird and boat, afloat alone, and in the pale light looking for all the world like the shape of love. ————————————– Christina Kallery called us from Ann Arbor, MI. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Con·tain·er /kənˈtānər/. (noun). 1. An object. 2. An object that can be used to hold. 3. An object that can be used to transport something. Synonyms: Vessel. Do you feel like a vessel? Ves·sel /ˈves(ə)l/. (noun). 1. Ship. 2. Hollow container. 3. Cask, Barrel, Ship. I think of myself as a container. in august i started eating myself into myself. this isn’t a metaphor. i was actually hungry. a barrel of hunger. i didn’t even know it could rain like this. i collected rain in the barrel of my Stom·ach. /ˈstəmək/. (noun). 1. An internal organ. 2. An appetite. Stom·ach. /ˈstəmək/. (verb). 1. Consume. Did you ever think of yourself as a daughter? A son? Con. /kon/. (noun). A Vietnamese noun meaning: 1. Daughter. 2. Son. 3. Child. Wasn’t I a vessel, then? Con. /kon/. (classifier). A Vietnamese classifier meaning: 1. Specifying the act of being an animal. 2. I am of animal. 3. To classify animacy. Wasn’t I a container? i wanted to be a container. until i became a container. to beg a small god to turn me into a prayer. i watched myself become a container. over and over. over and over. wasn’t i a good daughter/son/child/ Con. /kon/. (noun).? A Vietnamese noun meaning: 1. Daughter. 2. Son. 3. Child. 4. Animal. I watched my mother become a Con·tain·er /kənˈtānər/. (noun). 1. An object holding grief. 2. An object holding grief. 3. An object holding grief. An object holding daughterhood. my mom was a daughter. the way i was a daughter. to contain a prayer. to consume— a barrel. vessel. con. animal. daughter. over and over. over and over. wasn’t i a good [daughter/son/child/]? ————————————– Blue Đào Nguyễn called us from Saigon, Vietnam. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Joy can survive climate change. Radioactive baby crawling on all fours. So full of movement and color. Half the animals are gone, but baby finds other creatures to play with. Their gills are on the outside, their eyes haunting and heterochromatic. Their skin glows, too. Sharp, variegated ecstasy. Exuberantly fat lines aglow with graffiti ethos. Taking the world as it comes, not as it ought to be. Radiant Baby, sainthood may be possible, and if it is, bless this unholy poet who looks around the disappearing world and finds only despair and not beauty in the orange- yellow-red pollution moon. You do not even cry, baby, just burble in comic sans. You just climb towards nuclear proliferation chanting dada, dada. You grant us serenity on the subway. You model for us commercialized innocence. We buy you, our joy. We buy you, our hope. We smile at your innocent determination. A cave painting for the end times, depicting a Neanderthal dreamscape — a pictograph that will survive the inevitable collapse—but beautifully, a chunky butterfly kick away from annihilation, a stroke towards JOY! ————————————– Sean Hanrahan called us from Philadelphia, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

I’ve always wished God could grow me down into an egg in the snow. White on white. Piles of drift. Back in Cincinnati my tongue grew red in the midday cold, waiting for someone to suck it like cherry popsicle. Those were the days I danced like Jesus was coming. I took off my clothes and I felt very good about it, like it was the only thing in the world. Once I petted a farm chicken so softly she believed she had a greater purpose than egg production. We sit cross-legged in her coop, whistling this world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through as reminder, as prayer. We pass through the world’s largest rubber band ball. We pass through Penn State. We steal away to California and sit on the hood of my car at Pebble Beach, watch a group toss breadcrumbs at seagulls under a sign reading NO FEEDING. They’ll approach us, ask if I saved her from the butcher board or if her quivering eyeballs remind me of my own. I’ll tell them she wanted to find herself outside of her children, that the only quiver in my eyeballs is from the wind. People don’t realize there doesn’t always have to be some kind of tragic backstory. We could just be happy together. It could just be that. ————————————– Carolene Sarah Kurien called us from Fort Lauderdale, FL. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

"paul wall drives me home after our sade concert date" & names me his favorite dime. rubs his hands on my jukebox thighs & bobs his head to dj screw along the lake. i lean into the purple of midnight & take his palm to my cheek. suck in the freezing drip of platinum rings. we sail the shore south in a topless whip, my lollipop mouth matching its lacquer. he, my bourbon smooth guide, diamond dipped & dazzling, sips on the slow syrup of evening. grips the wheel & flashes a mouthful of mansion. serenades me with sweetest taboo & turns the car into a quiet southern storm. my hurricane on 44s, eyeing my heart & sweetening my tea. love is a 2004 vixen fantasy and he is my lone star. we glide on chrome, chasing the glisten of cosmos, riding along the asphalt’s bass. ————————————– Musu Bangaru called us from Chicago, IL. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Between months of silence, my father sends me communist TikToks from Chinese accounts. I assume they are pro but can’t know—I don’t have the app. What is between us remains unwatchable. But I want to look at him across our dimming country, water and wheat becoming one expanse of night. If I could drive to him, I would begin the wrong way. When he sends me a video of Anne Hathaway giving a speech about her father, all I can see is her face, unmoving, and I’m left to imagine what she might say the way my father in the dark is holding closely his phone and trying to remember my voice. ————————————– Andrew Chi Keong Yim called us from Queens, New York. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

Mom is sitting cross-legged on the hard kitchen floor, slicing cabbage and green onions for kimchi, covering her mouth as she laughs. She’s watching 7-year-old me in the living room, lip-syncing to Madonna and Whitney Houston, holding my Walkman like a microphone, grabbing my shiny Michael Jackson glove suspenders, pretending I am the next winner on Star Search. My brother, who is two years older, is practicing taekwondo with G.I. Joe action figures. A few feet away on the couch, dad’s holding a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, watching a scary VHS tape he rented for the weekend. Mom is still angry at him for showing us The Exorcist, but that’s how we spend quality time together. To be together. The year before the 1988 Seoul Olympics, we leave with mom for America. There will be no more walking off base to open street markets where vendors sell made-to-order spicy rice cakes, or giving my allowance to that elderly Korean lady who sells packs of Juicy Fruit gum from a broken hand basket. I will never again squat on a dirty public bathroom floor, or be taunted by Korean school girls for being a “mutt.” My brother and I will miss the walk to school, past the movie theater where we saw Return of the Living Dead, with other kids whose future is also unknown. No more origami classes or writing our names in Korean. Dad will stay where duty calls, while we move to a city in Virginia nicknamed Bad News. Heaven is no longer a place on earth. We are no longer together. ————————————– Trish Broome called us from Sykesville, MD. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

They say I appear in different places, to different people, at the same time. Saints bilocate too. If I had wings, my flapping would make every verb a we. Pain has splintered me. I am detached, restless, scattered to the wind of people’s wants. I am the necessary monster, the needed threat, the whispered warning. I am forever in your mouth. I do penance. Nothing is ever anyone’s but a woman’s fault. Have you never wept? Throat empty tired, so much squelching over the past? Lucky you, if you’ve never walked against a current until you turn the river red. But I know, even if we do it in hot, locked cars, us cryers are many-numbered, numinous. Underneath the waters, underneath our skeletons, there is ancient hunger, a shared and staggering scream. What if instead of inconstancy, a man let us throw these hands that mother and matter and mutter around a sturdy neck? What if we had floated downstream together, nothing good getting away? We could have kissed our children like they didn’t know what kisses were. We could have sung. Love has made me small. ————————————– Cristina Paul called us from Los Angeles, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems