VOICEMAIL POEMS

Voicemail Poems contributor Allyson Whipple joins host Logen Cure for the Winter 2017 episode of our podcast! This installment features poems by Jasmine Dillavou and Chris Rife, as well as an interview with Allyson. Music by TrueKey. (@truekey). >> The deadline to submit to our Spring Issue is March 15: voicemailpoems.org/call >> Support us on Patreon! patreon.com/voicemailpoems >> Review us on iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voice...oems/id847081003 More About the Poets: >> Jasmine Dillavou received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual and Performing Arts from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She has shown work in numerous exhibitions including the Student Show, X. presented at The Gallery of Contemporary Art. She was also the curator for the Spring Zine and Handmade Book Show in 2016. Her passions lie in documenting the personal and quiet experience of mixed-Latinas. Learn more on Facebook at Art by Jasmine Dillavou. >> Chris Rife is an aspiring human being. A semi-finalist for the 2016 Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award, he is a writer and performer based in Chicago. His work has been published in Denver Quarterly, Hobart, Ghost Ocean, CAP, and other places. Learn more at http://chrisrifewrites.tumblr.com/ >> Allyson Whipple is the author of two chapbooks, We're Smaller Than We Think We Are (Finishing Line Press 2013) and Come Into the World Like That (Five Oaks Press 2015). She is currently in the MFA program at the University of Texas at El Paso and she co-edits the Texas Poetry Calendar for Dos Gatos Press. Learn more at www.allysonmwhipple.com ~~ THANKS Y'ALL! ~~

The Voicemail Poems podcast RETURNS! Hosted by editorial staffer Logen Cure, featuring poems by Alabama Stone, Emily Yin, and Ron Riekki. Music by TrueKey (https://soundcloud.com/truekey). Submit to Voicemail Poems Fall 2016. Deadline September 15th. More info at http://voicemailpoems.org

Voicemail Poems editors Logen Cure and Amy Saul-Zerby return for another episode of our podcast! Featuring poems by nico wilkinson, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, and Emily Page Wilson. Music by TrueKey (https://soundcloud.com/truekey). >> The deadline to submit to our Winter Issue is December 15: http://voicemailpoems.org/call >> Support us on Patreon! http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems >> Review us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voicemail-poems/id847081003 More About the Poets: >> nico wilkinson is a spoken word artist, letterpress enthusiast, lover of plants, dogs, and colorado springs. their poems are usually about queerness, brain stuff, love, and its byproducts. learn more at http://nicothepoet.tumblr.com/ >> Learn more about Melissa Lozada-Oliva on Facebook at Melissa Lozada-Oliva Poetry, Twitter @elloMelissa, and on Button Poetry with her poem "Like Totally Whatever." >> Emily Page Wilson is an English Adjunct and Poetry MFA from UNC Wilmington. She is a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets nominee. She wants to grow something wild & unruly. She tweets @Emmy_Golightly. ~~ THANKS Y'ALL! ~~

I have spent most of my life as a writer, spinning universes and microscope lenses, cosmic horrors, and hope. Intellectual treatise, statistical research, and internet rant. but despite this, and despite months of trying, I am shit at writing love poems. And you, you deserve love poems but convention and tradition offer me no council I mean, I could promise pull down the moon for you, and I’m sure you’d be impressed by my scientific prowess as I tear chapters from your favorite science fiction to build the world’s first tractor beam... But the minute I turn that thing on, oceans will pull back from distant shores and rush towards our coastal town killing hundreds of our friends and thousands of innocent fish somewhere in the vicinity of Tahiti, and I just don’t think expressing love with the mass murder of people ...and fish makes a whole lot of sense. You can call me unromantic, but no matter how fond of you I am, I just don’t think any one person is worth an extinction level event. I could tell you that your soulful, eyes shine like the sun, that you are like staring at the sun, But, one of the myriad reasons I love you is that unlike some other loves, in some other poems, you are not out to blind me. ...and unlike the sun, you don't give me skin cancer. I am suspicious that celestial metaphors secretly suck. Maybe I’m being too literal, but I feel like comparing our love to silent, deadly titans, suspended in cold unknowable expanse, is like saying we will always be so distant, we will only really see each other in the reflections of our past. I want better for us, words that don’t imply emotions have rendered us scientifically illiterate sociopaths. After hours and months, the best I’ve been able to come up with is this: I'll be right back, with coffee. No, seriously, I think these might be The Most Romantic Words. ...Hear me out. When I say, I’ll be right back with coffee I mean I will face blindness, from the actual sun, at whiskey hangover o’clock, so you can sleep a little longer. I mean I want your mind to function at full capacity because while, yes, you are inarguably beautiful, I’m very much like a zombie in that I am really into you for your brains. It means, I want to give you comfort and as proper Seattleites our comfort curls steaming from mugs clutched between fingers and tongues tempered to know a little bitterness enhances warmth. When I say, “I’ll be right back with coffee”, I mean you’ve known me to leave, And I have known you to leave, and we’ve seen each other run both away from and toward dangerous things ...like each other and while we may put cold unknowable distance between us, if I can provide warmth, or comfort, or a few minutes of peace rest assured, even if I have to go for a while, I’ll be right back, with coffee. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast

as silent and holy as an empty church. a polished row of pews. you, moon in the sky, how do you do it? your one-handed gravity holding still the earth. astral magic trick, you newly christened old god. every family’s forgotten dance is a scar on your surface. memory like a bear trap. worldfodder magnet. wise old sledgehammer once smashed through our orbit longways. we were just a pie cooling on the galactic windowsill. now we say Light & mean your face, stretched our whole lives and once reached your shadow. pockmarked queen of all ships. all flags. can’t sing a note of worship if it doesn’t include a word of pain. the night sky’s opening bell and serene last call, nursing your craters like old wounds nursing your craters like children. your face held high and regal through eons of the same steady bruise and somehow you arrive to us with a bouquet of escape of routes. i have so much to learn from you, and not just about physics. how long did it take you to learn such luminescent confidence? your brilliant backlit halo, the way you just float and move everything, shine your own ligaments to dust. when people say they love each other to the You and back, is it about distance or about damage? about some man’s lonely footprint? and what do we know about damage next to you, anyway? all our blood clots thick with time but you have no winds to whisper your name. sometimes the healing does not rush through you. prehistoric ocean or otherwise. there are no channels you didn’t cut yourself. no way to say Over in the dead space. no one there to hear it but a silent star. and a billion other stars. ————————————– Zachary Goldberg called us from Oakland, CA. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast