VOICEMAIL POEMS

VOICEMAIL POEMS
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Poetry via voicemail. Missed calls you need to hear. Open submissions accepted. Guidelines at http://voicemailpoems.org

  1. "Thirty-Some Years Frozen" by Nix Carlson

    FEB 4

    "Thirty-Some Years Frozen" by Nix Carlson

    frostbitten hands snatch at the cigarette dangling from your lips and you stoop to meet my gaze with a hangdog expression. i want to be angry (god, i want to be so angry) because cigarettes will kill you in a lifetime, and – i have handwarmers in my f*****g pocket. but love is a two-way street, so it doesn’t matter if my pockets are overflowing with iron powder and saltwater, or if my hands offer woolen mittens, or if i crank the heat in my bedroom to ninety degrees with just the friction of my hips on yours. love is a two-way street, and if your frostbitten hands won’t drop their carcinogens, you’ll freeze to death. i cannot exhale love onto your fingertips, bring feeling back into your bones, without you first reaching for me. and i want to be angry (god, i want to be furious) but how can i be, when the only thing your body knows is how to weather a midwest winter? ————————————– Nix Carlson called us from Lexington, KY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

    2 min
  2. "They Send Me to the City to Stay with my Auntie" by Bill Ratner

    FEB 4

    "They Send Me to the City to Stay with my Auntie" by Bill Ratner

    I hang my jacket in the hallway her apartment is old made from shoestring potatoes it smells like a jelly factory. Against the wall a man’s face eyes folded laces around his neck. That’s your Uncle, dear. He barred her from doing much of anything when he was around then he died. She asked the doctors to keep his eyes and brain alive and put them in a fish tank. That night when she got home she put on a mambo record, poured herself a vodka, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke in his eyes. The tank is down the hall full of algae and bubbles. She has it hidden behind a curtain. On the wall are photos of President Gerald Ford, our family on vacation, and antique pictures of naked ladies. How many naked ladies do have to look at before I get something to eat? I ask. I’ll think about it, she says. Behind the curtain skirts are hung up, sponges tied together, a bag of teeth. My Auntie takes a photo of me so my parents will see the child they raised, buzz-cut, roadworthy. My Auntie tells me stories about my family, takes me shopping, for sweaters and sneakers. When she gets excited she makes the sound of a happy seagull and spins like a mooring buoy. ————————————– Bill Ratner called us from Los Angeles, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

    2 min
  3. "Orchard Grafts" by Tian Sanchez-Ballado

    FEB 4

    "Orchard Grafts" by Tian Sanchez-Ballado

    A fig in an orange grove— I pruned myself from the rotting branch, sawed through the only bark I knew. Now I stand among the citrus on the longest night, their branches strung with stars, garlands of dried slices glowing like tiny suns, the air thick with clove and cedar. I watch the easy way they intertwine, how a hand finds the back of a neck, how embraces happen without flinching. I ache in rooms full of warmth. Grafted here now, tethered to sap not my own, wrapped in evergreen and borrowed moss— the trees around me teaching what roots can do when the frost comes, how love moves through heartwood without asking permission. Then the gathering scatters. Everyone carries their candlelight home. My husband’s hand knows my bark. My in-laws wrap me in their shade. This grove has given me everything. And still— somewhere, two trees stand stubbornly rooted in place; they planted me and refuse to water; they’d lose me before submitting to pruning themselves. I am full of sap, of sweetness, of more love than I was built to hold, and still bleeding from a cut I made to save my life. ————————————– Tian Sanchez-Ballado called us from Tallahassee, FL. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

    2 min
  4. "Nooduitgang" by Cole Pragides

    FEB 4

    "Nooduitgang" by Cole Pragides

    Once I visited my old roommate at a film festival on Scheveningen beach where the winning movie was something avant garde and vaguely religious we did not understand. Afterwards we danced to Madonna's “Like a Prayer” within the sand dunes all night, the wind transforming the blanket around my shoulders into wings, my roommate recounting how their friends in Atlanta held their newborn for the first time. We biked miles back into town and laid next to a canal. As we smoked weed, they confessed they might never be able to live in our home country again. I know, but tonight let’ s pretend we’re the loves of our lives, I retorted, swinging a stick to hit another out of the air. Murmuration began overhead, the birds changing phase according to the relative strengths of our anger, wonder, and fear. The sky moved without permission. We let the mosquitoes circle and bite our legs bloody until light. Small volumes of ourselves hung in the air around us as we ignored all the ways to start over. ————————————– Cole Pragides called us from San Francisco, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

    2 min
  5. "Motion, or Teaching My Best Friend My Favorite Songs At the Top of Our Lungs" by Ariana Brown

    FEB 4

    "Motion, or Teaching My Best Friend My Favorite Songs At the Top of Our Lungs" by Ariana Brown

    for Hamze we are as dark inside as the night is, meaning, we are so beautiful most people choose not to see us, for fear of overwhelming themselves—& we are sitting in the front seat of your car, shifting toward music. we are going home, if home is the equation for to be left alone. I put my finger on the pulse of the nearest star & decide on Stevie or Kendrick. because we have so little time to reflect on the recklessness of our still being alive & underneath stars & singing, we just sing. I teach you the words to my oldest freedoms, or we scream skyfuls of threats & boasts, queued from our permissionless names, & for a moment, we watch depression unfold: our killed souls spinning their dust back into us, claiming the feet, the hands, the tender mouth. be careful what we tell ourselves— everyone I know will be dead soon, it will not end soon, it will not end—the myths we craft with hopelessness. & who ever said joy had no utility? if our homelands do not remember our names, we are both hated in this awful place, let us make crooks of our famed blood, let us refuse our bones their crackle, let us speak the silliness we inherited, let us open wide the blackest sky & release every shadow of the innocent caught in our throats, & let us revel, revel, revel in the thrilled motion of our excellent & working hearts. ————————————– Ariana Brown called us from Houston, TX. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

    2 min
  6. "Lukewarm Iced Tea" by Erick Flores Diaz

    FEB 4

    "Lukewarm Iced Tea" by Erick Flores Diaz

    Our eyes meet on the rear-view mirror Scorched earth passes by Stretched by the mile, rolled windows for letting the poem breathe. Tainted. A light contour is drawn on your white tank top, above, fifty-three well-placed chest hairs are just enough. God, this drink is awful. Then why do you keep drinking it? He says, as he maintains a firm grip on my thigh with one hand as he drives with the other. Hollow teeth and all. I don't know (I do) I wanted to try something new, Feel something, be someone. We order Chinese takeout, you insist on paying and I let you grope my manhood, sheltered by a well fitting pair of washed Levi’s in return. Me gusta la coquetería, me gustas tú. Two solitary ice cubes cling, melting by the nightstand, Long gone are the excuses obscured by curtains. A card is drawn, our breaths equalize. We watch Ripley on a screen fashioned with a rosary on one of its corners. While he bounces, he looked at me with those blank eyes so enamoured, So lost At sea, Like the body of Dickie Greenleaf deep inside the Amalfi coast. His drowned gaze, Somewhere in between Lust And midnight, Penetrates me, to the point where I couldn’t distinguish who was penetrating who. So I find myself here, while your head lays on my chest. I know what you want to hear, but for you, it doesn’t. You play with my pubes and I kiss your forehead. Sometimes We laugh, comparing ourselves to the TV series that we barely acknowledge - Good thing we don’t have a tragedy of our own nor bizarre love triangles - Right. Inhale, exhale. He kisses my neck, mi amor, mi vergoncito, mi Bocanegra. I can’t say that I don’t feel the same, Showing restraint is of no use upon wretched land. Outside the Jacarandas bloom, The sunset has punched its card. This is something I cannot give you. Added weight forces my chest you arise even further, it knows where I am, This body of mine, For its going the extra mile, So there’s no honor among thieves, Fine, if you insist, I will go wherever you go, I will try the chicken tikka masala, I will reply to your “mi amores”, I will play your games, I will be the stud who steals you a kiss in public. I will love you the way you want to be loved. Solo no me pidas la noche. ————————————– Erick Flores Diaz called us from Morelia, Michoacán. México. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

    3 min
  7. "Grieving with Bob Ross" by Trystan Popish

    FEB 4

    "Grieving with Bob Ross" by Trystan Popish

    The afternoon of my grandmother’s funeral, my sisters, mom, nephew, and I decide to paint with a Bob Ross episode, hoping to dull our grief with bright colors, to soothe our broken spirits with his bulbous brown hair, his velvet voice and reassurances. The painting seems simple enough: a cabin in the woods in the light of the moon, a peaceful scene easily accomplished in a half-hour episode. Later, thirty minutes stretches into three hours of pausing and painting, rewinding and repainting, until falling away one by one we give up the ghost, each departing the table with some distorted portrait of our grief. My cabin in the woods looks like an outhouse, my sky a lake upon the ground. Soon only my mother sits alone, striving for perfection on the day she’s buried her mother’s ashes, an interment doubly done, an ending soon to be etched in stone. I watch her paint and wonder what future afternoon I’ll cue an eternal episode, pick up my brush, and try to put pain to canvas, letting Bob lull me into thinking just for a moment that even the trees could be happy that day. ————————————– Trystan Popish called us from Denver, CO. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

    2 min
  8. "God's Alternative Response to Job (2025 Version)" by Jonathan Fletcher

    FEB 4

    "God's Alternative Response to Job (2025 Version)" by Jonathan Fletcher

    Where were you when Jeff Hiller won his first Emmy? Or when Taylor got engaged to Travis? Tell me, why hasn’t Ralph Fiennes won an Oscar? Why did Adam Lambert lose to Kris Allen? Yes, there are things that may not make sense, there are things that may not seem fair. Why did some of the vaccinated sicken, some of the anti-vaxxers not? It isn’t right that you lost your husband, Job. Or your ten-year-old twin girls. Or your Ramsey-earned investments. Or your health to Long COVID. There is no answer I can give you. This isn’t Family Feud. I am no Steve Harvey; I am just God. Even so, I can stay with you. Like a viral video, I can linger. But if you want to ghost me, feel free to. If you want to block me, go ahead. Give yourself permission. Do not apologize. As Demi says, “Sorry Not Sorry.” Grieve how you want to. Though you’ll have another family, it won’t replace the one you lost. It won’t undo your parents’ rejection. However loving, a chosen family isn’t quite the same. Remember Carl Winslow? Remember Philip Banks? Each a father that yours wasn’t. Each a father you wish you had. Each a father that was there for you. Unlike Blockbuster and Redbox, I, too, am here. And I’m watching you rebuild. Even though you can’t rewind, you can make another life worth watching to the credits. And I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. ————————————– Jonathan Fletcher called us from San Antonio, TX. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

    2 min
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5
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

Poetry via voicemail. Missed calls you need to hear. Open submissions accepted. Guidelines at http://voicemailpoems.org

Information

  • Creator
    VOICEMAIL POEMS
  • Years Active
    2014 - 2026
  • Episodes
    154
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    VOICEMAIL POEMS