Author Archives: voicemailpoems

by Lucy K. Shaw The taste of red bull in the morningon my teeth when I haven’t brushed themThe shape of your back when youcrouch over your computer in the nightThe feeling in my chest when you sayyou are going to meet someone from tinder at 1pmThe feeling in my chest when you say youContinue reading “PERFECTION OF DOUBT”

by Sara Woods Dear Hairless Dream, You’ve got the nicest arms I’ve ever felt.I can feel them without hair now due toyour recent hairlessness & they feellike waking up too early & sitting on a porchwith coffee & noticing the wind.They feel like getting to know yourbest friend for the first time, thoselate nights ofContinue reading “Dear Hairless Dream”

by Tara Jean Bernier After Shihan the Poet This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine… I am sick and tire of slut shaming. Dude. What year is it- 1956? Why if a woman has sex is she a trollop – and if she doesn’t she’s a prude – and if she wantsContinue reading “Sick and Tired”

by Janea Kelly he prefers women who haven’t slept with too many men,and I prefer men who have slept with more women,with more men than I who cry when you press a finger against his perineum,who beg you for permission to come, who are eager to worshipyour ankles, your kneecaps, your cunt because every girlContinue reading “Tender is the Knight or a response to Bukowski’s A Poem For Swingers”

by Emily O’Neill She says we are going to Oz, but it hasn’tbeen painted yet; pockets the cones from my macula, won’t let me see color. Says with a shovel we’ll arrive faster than weather.Dig. Pull at the ground until it is part of you. End up in the orchard instead of in town. WeContinue reading “Different-Colored Horse”

by Sally J. Johnson (because all poems are about the whole goddamn universe if you think about it that way and you should) the current count of men in space is sixwhich is still some unbelievable number. still too fewto say we reached anywhere beyond ourselves. still somethingto believe in if you’re little enough andContinue reading “another poem about the whole goddamn universe”

by Christopher Morgan All the strawberries you grew sparked when we’d bite into them. Must have been the vibes of summer seared inside. Yesterday you woke me up, put a sword in my hand, and made me fight my brother in a field of sunflowers. I don’t have a brother. But he was furious atContinue reading “Dueling Season”

by Chelsea Werner-Jatzke He holds my birthday like a national holiday.He tells me on the phone, callingfrom a number I don’t haveblocked, I hold your birthday like a national holiday. As if I were a dead man.As if I were a dead man and my birthday was the day of my birthas a man. AsContinue reading “How held”

by A. J. Bradley I used to have psychic dreams a lot though not many anymoresometimes predictions months in advancesome minor everyday acts, someregarding B-list celebritiesfor instancethe guy who played Billy Crystal’s best friend in When Harry Met SallyI dreamt of him briefly,doing what, I don’t remember,woke up confusedI hadn’t watched that film in years,thenContinue reading “I don’t want to believe Bruno Kirby was closer to me than you ever were”

by Caleb Andrew Ward If you wanted, you could hold the sun in the palm of your hand today.It would only go where you tell it to go. It would only stay when you said, stay. I tried to hold the sun, but my hand wasn’t sturdy enough. I didn’t have the calloused hands youContinue reading “You could hold the sun in your hands today”