Voicemail Poems
@voicemailpoems.bsky.social
340 followers 260 following 87 posts
highlighting the intimate + raw voices of new + established writers of all styles | missed calls you actually want to hear | voicemailpoems.org
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voicemailpoems.bsky.social
we are currently accepting submissions for our FALL 2025 issue, & we'd love to hear from you! ✨🍁✨

voicemailpoems.org/submit

🧡 deadline october 1st 🧡
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
last call for submissions for our fall issue! ⌛️ call & send in a poem by midnight pacific time to be considered ✨
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
we are currently accepting submissions for our FALL 2025 issue, & we'd love to hear from you! ✨🍁✨

voicemailpoems.org/submit

🧡 deadline october 1st 🧡
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
one week left to submit! ⌛️ send us a poem 👻
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
we are currently accepting submissions for our FALL 2025 issue, & we'd love to hear from you! ✨🍁✨

voicemailpoems.org/submit

🧡 deadline october 1st 🧡
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
“I dreamed of a canoe, and of the two of us”

- Devan Murphy

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/t...
Reposted by Voicemail Poems
the-engine-idling.bsky.social
The Urge is open for poetry and art!

Deadline: Sept 22nd!

engineidling.net
Reposted by Voicemail Poems
pigeonpagesnyc.bsky.social
Extension alert! We added a couple more days to our Poetry Contest! Send your poetry for our judge, Cecily Parks by this Friday; the winner will receive $250 and publication.

Find details in the nest and on Submittable: pigeonpagesnyc.submittable.com/submit
Flyer for Pigeon Pages Poetry Contest

Deadline Extended! September 19

Winner receives $250 and publication

Judged by Cecily Parks

(There is also a photo of Cecily and images of yellow flowers)
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
“But dawn,
Because you hid behind the horizon
torches blazed, blinding,
breaking sleep and families
as parents were taken from screaming kids
to be jailed then charged then sent back to the islands
 
Dawn,
because you were silent,
because all murmurings were silenced.”

- @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
two more weeks to submit! ⌛️ send us a poem 🎃
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
we are currently accepting submissions for our FALL 2025 issue, & we'd love to hear from you! ✨🍁✨

voicemailpoems.org/submit

🧡 deadline october 1st 🧡
Reposted by Voicemail Poems
paradiselaust.bsky.social
A poem that’ll be in my forthcoming book, This Elegance, in the summer issue of @voicemailpoems.bsky.social ☕️
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
“My neighbor listens patiently, amused by my young life.
We’re the only Black gay men in our building,
so he has me over for Sunday tea. I fill our cups.
For the heart, he says, adding whiskey to his.”

- Derrick Austin (@paradiselaust.bsky.social)

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/s...
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
“My neighbor listens patiently, amused by my young life.
We’re the only Black gay men in our building,
so he has me over for Sunday tea. I fill our cups.
For the heart, he says, adding whiskey to his.”

- Derrick Austin (@paradiselaust.bsky.social)

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/s...
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
“sometimes at 10:37pm you need to change your life / so you do the next best thing / and you cut your hair”

- Sarena Brown

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/s...
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
we are currently accepting submissions for our FALL 2025 issue, & we'd love to hear from you! ✨🍁✨

voicemailpoems.org/submit

🧡 deadline october 1st 🧡
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
“There was happiness in 1930s Germany and at the end of Rome, too."

- Jill McLaughlin

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/p...
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
“we talked about the final moment
and how I might not make it
(I did, he waited)
 
we talked about how a summer would never
be enough time, as the days stretched out
my son, his namesake, waited in the cherry tree”

- Annie Powell Stone

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/m...
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
"Let's say,
This is for me.
This is because I want.
This is because I exist.
This is because I take up space,
as much as I want, & more,
& I survive despite your best efforts
to tamp me down,
& I will fucking wear my defiance
like a punch to the gut"

- Maia Brown-Jackson (@andyetpoetry.bsky.social)
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
“On Fridays, management makes movie popcorn
to celebrate the end of the week.
Why are we always so hungry?
The smell of fake butter is rich.
We follow it. We eat.”

- Jaime Jacques

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/k...
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
“the olive jar says you should take only nine, yet seventeen have passed through your teeth. it is okay. it will all, one day, be okay.”

- Annabelle Chen

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/g...
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
“Lake Berryessa, azure at our backs / the man from / Toluca slips me / lozenges from under his tongue / Spanish alive / in my mouth”

- Tatiana Chaterji

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/f...
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
"b/c one day i will want for nothing
b/c one day i will not want"

- Diandra Williams

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/d...
voicemailpoems.bsky.social
"What song do you serve your ears
the morning after your mom sends you home
with a peace flower
and you say goodbye in the dark
because it hurts to see?"

- @marissadesantis.bsky.social

voicemailpoems.org/2025/08/14/b...
Reposted by Voicemail Poems
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Excited to have a poem from This Elegance in the latest @voicemailpoems.bsky.social. Follow the link below to hear me read it as well as read and listen to the other fab poems in the summertime issue!
Sunday Tea by Derrick Austin

I studied Italian painters, Giorgione, Titian.
At one job, I'm a glorified secretary.
I answer the phone in my professional voice and sell gaudy urns to luxe addresses.

My neighbor listens patiently, amused by my young life.
We're the only Black gay men in our building, 
so he has me over for Sunday tea. I fill our cups.
For the heart, he says, adding whiskey to his.

In the 80s, on a fellowship in Spain,
he practiced arias and translated Romani ballads.
After a concert, he presented Leontyne Price with flowers wrapped in sheer blue paper.

Today, I argue Another Country is Baldwin's best novel.
My neighbor shares a recipe for chicken paprikash.
Gone like that, he says, flipping through an album of friends 
in their youth with fades and thick mustaches.

They could quote Mahogany. They cut up 
in the house-inflected dark of a dancefloor, worldly and glamorous as a Venetian painting.
I refill our cups. A splash of whiskey in his tea.
Reposted by Voicemail Poems
kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social
The Summer issue of Voicemail Poems is out and I’m over the moon to be in it!

#poetsofbluesky
#poetrycommunity