"Even Though I Hate the Movie" by Mattie K. Lagan

VOICEMAIL POEMS

38:16

Many of us are entering the new year with a similar goal — to build community and connect more with others. To kick off season five, Priya Parker shares ideas on how to be the host with the most. An expert on building connection, Priya is the author of “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters.” Whether it's a book club, wedding, birthday or niche-and-obscurely themed party, Priya and Chris talk about how to create meaningful and fun experiences for all of your guests — including yourself. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts . For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Want to help shape TED’s shows going forward? Fill out our survey here ! Learn more about TED Next at ted.com/futureyou Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

about a year ago 0:35

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On PCH somewhere Malibu— going north not quite yet at Point Dume, two biker boys, not quite men, stopped at a red light. Underneath hiero- glyphic hand signs a single red rose in hand outstretched. Electricity wrinkled between them, All-American rose received, ugly-beautiful bag scene. This scene was recalled to me like a home-movie dancing on the TV. ————————————– Mattie K. Lagan called us from Seattle, WA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems

108 episodes

#Books #Poetry #Poems #Spoken #Writing #VOICEMAIL POEMS #Arts #Word

"Even Though I Hate the Movie" by Mattie K. Lagan

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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published about a year ago

MP3•Episode home

108 episodes

#Books #Poetry #Poems #Spoken #Writing #VOICEMAIL POEMS #Arts #Word

All episodes

VOICEMAIL POEMS

1
"Can't Do Without You" by Scarlett Hume 2:28

5 weeks ago2:28

2:28

You’re like a paragraph in a book, he says, folding a dollar bill into an origami ring at the bar, and I’m not sure if it’s an insult. He slips the ring onto my forefinger: don’t get too excited. Should I apologize to you or myself or the woman who loved him before? I stay for the story. He is the only one who can make me laugh during an argument. We huddle in the doorway of the pub, passing the vape back and forth in the cold. He mocks my rotating flavors: watermelon, mango, strawberry. I tell him I miss my cigarettes but really, it’s just autumn again. Puff, puff. I’m rotting from the inside. Downing pills with an Old Fashioned. My heart is episodic, my brain one chemical imbalance after another. This unfurling is not what I wanted. He’s the head rush from the first good drag. The first sip of coffee to cure a hangover. I’m living at the bottom of the bottle and it’s beautiful here, all glass and no windows. Who is there left to quit for? The bodies in the lake, one of them mine. The bodies in his pool, all of them my lovers. I slaughter them to the gods of my wanting. I like the way he talks to his cats. Throws one over a shoulder and coos. I ache for this rough with my soft. A 4am kiss, a purpling bruise on my bicep. All those late night drives, always to him. We’re at the bar again. I’m nursing an unwanted Tito’s shot as he ignores me for a man with a matching DUI. He only notices when I storm away. Follows as I’m trying to hide so I give him a hard time because how dare he watch me bleed. Scar, I love you. He says my childhood nickname like he can hardly lift it. I’ve forgotten how it feels to be seen and still wanted. I can outrun anything, even love. I can shoehorn any ending I want, even with my heart in his chokehold. In this version, I fish my lovers’ bodies out of the pool for one last dance before burial. I lay my vapes on their graves instead of flowers. ————————————– Scarlett Hume called us from Washington, DC. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"When You Don't Feel Like Yourself" by Kenny Mitchell 2:55

5 weeks ago2:55

2:55

Double-check you have not morphed into wax. Are the appendages protruding from the trunk of your body still soft skin, or have you hardened your armor like they taught you in eighth grade when a car flattened your cat at your Christmas party? You cried. You watched as he twitched and his insides squelched onto the pavement, and when he became still, his body stiffened. Still, with tears, you hauled him home. It was hard. They said “you’re ruining the party with your moping,” so you plopped by the Christmas tree. It was hard, was it hard to wake up this morning and find your skin had not hardened like exoskeleton? You are still soft. Still tender. It was tenth grade when your grandfather requested you be pallbearer at grandma’s funeral. You couldn’t bear it, the weight, the load. The corpse, it was caked in makeup to mask the blemishes from Her accident. She was not herself. You grasped her hand—it was hard. It was like wax, and when you squeezed her hand farewell, you left an indentation. That was hard. To see a hand that was no longer her hand. Remember if you wake up and don’t feel human, check your hands. Knead the flesh of your palm. If it morphs to hand again, you are still alive. You are still alive. Still, you are alive. You are you, and you are alive! You are alive! You are soft. Still human. Still tender. Still raw. Still. You are not twitching. Not wax. It is hard to love because someday love goes stiff. And you must convince yourself to lift love from the pavement, to love even when the soft animal of love’s body hardens, and you cringe when the coffin contacts the ground. And you feel numb, too soft. When it’s all too much, let the softness of your body convince you. You’re alive. You’re alive. You’re alive. ————————————– Kenny Mitchell called us from Bloomington, IN. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"WHEN THE BLUES COME (ALWAYS GO FOR THE CATS)" by David J. Schast 1:46

5 weeks ago1:46

1:46

When the blues find where I’ve been hiding, They pile on like puppies— so damn excited to see me. These days, I’m into cats, brother. You know, maybe one will rub up against me, once in awhile, or meow enough until I give it what it wants— usually my food and then, my appetite. But the dogs, man… they just don’t stop— yipping, nipping, slobbering— all fucking over me, and then I’m down for the three-to-five-day count. I try to rationalize—“They’re just puppies. They’ll get bored and go away.” I try stoicism—“I can’t get bothered by the uncontrollable.” I try booze—the puppies just lap that shit up. But they always sniff me out! After a few days enjoying the sunshine, I guess my contented stink gives me away, ‘cause the cute, fucking, little, tail-waggers always, always fucking find me, the little shitheads. First rule of depression: We don’t talk about depression. I wonder if Paper Street Soap Co. makes Existential Stench— extended release version, of course— its scent so cloying and heavy, it’ll hide my temporary joy. Crap! Here they come, the adorable little bastards. Shoving their tongues up my nose, in my mouth, and one—I’m sure his name is Cletus— is so glad to see me, he’s going to pee on me, gah! Get away from me you goddamn mutts! ————————————– David J. Schast called us from Elkins Park, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"Uncle Loser The Knight of Swords" by RJ Equality Ingram 2:57

5 weeks ago2:57

2:57

My mother’s half brother wore a blue herringbone tweed jacket with padded elbows to her funeral / The kind worn by a caricature of a substitute teacher or traveling salesman or a freshly sober high school dropout / He told us to call him Uncle Loser & used to whisper to us in the back of his trailer the same three ghost stories every summer / The one about the man who underachieves his way back to the kiddie table when the adults start pairing themselves into euchre teams / The one about a man who drags a rusted shopping cart behind him as he haunts the parking lot of the abandoned shopping malls that line the freeway access roads / The one about his teenage classmates who drank themselves into their senior year & went missing while camping in the woods not far from here / Uncle Loser taught his parrot all the best curse words to use on everyone except grandma & his daughters / We thought that damn bird was gonna outlive us all but she died early from lung cancer / Family Tradition / For every set of us one must annihilate himself farther faster / Uncle Loser surprised his in-laws by looking like a goddamn college professor next to the cremains of my mother / My dad was so impressed by the burnout’s newfound glamour he offered to buy a round of drinks for them before remembering that side of the family was newly sober / Uncle Loser used to let me spin around in his daughter’s tutu in front of an antique mirror in the back of his trailer / He was glad someone enjoyed his embroidery. Ask Your Uncle to let you take a tutu home | Turn to page 2 Spin until “Genius of Love” starts to skip | Turn to page 3 ————————————– RJ Equality Ingram called us from Portland, OR. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"The Laughing Cinder Block" by Marlanda Dekine 1:19

5 weeks ago1:19

1:19

They call one bulldagger. I heard them say she spreads women’s legs that's all she does, but I know her. She builds entire worlds where their mouths cannot go, their eyes cannot perceive. What they wonder is who she fucks and how they are going to have more children in the world, and there is more to loving a woman. I know because I hold them two inside. An elder called the bisexual one greedy, and we all laughed at her small imagination. Her hands mortared me together. Them two made me part of a house to hold back the winds and water for a century, keep them safe whether hurricane or one of them come knocking at their door, and because the family loves a corpse, we will be cremated into ash and return as blocks calling out for a love like theirs to hold. The only thing that hears them two sex are concrete and coal fly, and neither one will tell. ————————————– Marlanda Dekine called us from Georgetown, SC. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"The First Time a Man Fucked me Like a Man" by Mary Violet 1:12

5 weeks ago1:12

1:12

I want to be: a good boy, your domesticated coyote. My tongue’s handwriting is the shape of your body unshaved and without a shower. They need us to feel disgusted with ourselves, so you commit to my appetite unreserved. You become tender only while listening to crust punk and letting my fingers impersonate what I really want. The moon is a cuck watching our disentanglement. I can’t remember if I slept but the birds are our mothers waking us up. You make my coffee like a prayer, so I call you a saint right before we kiss. It is time to creep into something other than each other, but you don’t need a leash to take me on a walk. You’re five feet taller than me when I’m on all fours. You fear a million fears about me, but only a handful are true. ————————————– Mary Violet called us from Philadelphia, PA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"Tabitha" by Meghan Malachi 2:24

5 weeks ago2:24

2:24

I’m on the floor again, and that isn’t a metaphor for rock bottom. My new therapist asked me how I did it. How I managed to keep myself safe all these years. For the first time in over a decade, I was honest: I don’t remember. The meds are working, too, I think. Though after they unfurl my patterns, my dreams of precision, all the rot turns to tremors in my hands. It feels like the world ended when we were fourteen, and after years of dodging the undead on bare feet, I finally found my way to cold water and clean shoes. So after the session, I went out and bought stamps. I was thinking of the last time you and I shared a meal. How we cried in the rollercoaster line at Busch Gardens because we were hot and hungry and couldn’t fit ourselves to girlhood. How you said that Tampa will never be home because we wear fewer clothes here and our sweat smells different here. That night we tossed curse words across the dinner table and stuffed our mouths sour with lettuce. —By now you must know that I’ve broken my promise: I’m dealing with men so I don’t have to deal with myself. I’m thinking of one who lives on the west end of the city. He makes odd music, and I pretend that its subversion is what inspires me. He calls me the poet of silence and hair—you’ll be proud to know our love never reached flesh. Thank God it stopped at the bones. I hope you’ve kept your promise. And I hope your thyroid is better. Tabitha, if I could carry it all, I would. ————————————– Meghan Malachi called us from Chicago, IL. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"Survivor Audition Video #3" by Isaiah Newman 3:07

5 weeks ago3:07

3:07

We open with a stationary shot of me in my office, a pride flag on the wall behind me. An offscreen bonfire flickers in my eyes, and the savvy viewer will read this as a symbol of both passion and hunger, and before they can ask where it comes from I begin to speak: “I’m a therapist and community organizer living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this is my audition video for Survivor in the form of a poem, and my name is Isaiah Moses Newman…” and the savvy viewer will recall, here, that Moses once came upon a field that held a bush that burned and would not die, and if they are Jewish they may also know that he answered the blaze by shouting hineni, which can translate to “here I am,” but also “witness me here, having survived all that has tried to kill me.” A drumbeat begins in the background as I describe the tear-stained and sleepless nights of my adolescence, and then on screen a picture flashes: me and the friends I called family at age 19, huddled in down jackets like penguins, and there is a conspicuous silhouette carved out of the center of the picture, but I do not name him, or describe the way his loss shattered us. Instead, the picture vanishes, and I explain that I have spent the past year obsessing over a reality TV show in which found families tear each other apart for false promises of survival, and it has felt familiar. I do not say that I lost someone the same way as the silhouette in October, because the law prevents me from speaking their name. I do not describe how badly I want to believe that we can save people, and how I have failed. Instead, I speak of the many ways I have tried to stop the world from burning even when it seems impossible, and then we pan to the fourth wall, which is not a wall at all but a curtain of air that opens onto a field containing a bonfire, and a long tracking shot follows me as I walk through it, and I stop next to the inferno and my ribs glow through my shirt like coals and we zoom out to see that the bonfire was actually the burning bush the whole time, limbs outstretched and skeletal, and I reach my arms up to the sky and my fingertips light like candlewicks, and the glow spreads from my ribs to my heart, and the savvy viewer will see how I burn and burn and do not die, and then I shout of how the world seems always to be inventing new ways to break the people and communities I love, but my heart burns with the flame of survival and I am a therapist to keep as many of us alive and singing as I can, and I am an organizer because we deserve a world that can hear our songs, and I will win Survivor if you put me on the show because I know what it takes to keep the torch of belief alive in the face of all that would drown it. So hineni, CBS. Here I am. Come and find me. ————————————– Isaiah Newman called us from Cambridge, MA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"Psychography" by Birch Wiley 1:32

5 weeks ago1:32

1:32

In August it’s hard not to want – everything heavy with it – ginkgo fruit rots on sidewalks, sweat falls down spines, the whole beast city breathes in smog and breathes out low clouds dropping lightning. Confused, a little, reading subway signs for revelation, it all comes up wonder – which pre-historic lizard dragged itself up into daylight just so you could buy Calvin Klein underwear and forget to call your mom on purpose? Who’s your manager, Saint Sebastian? Maimonides? What day of the week is it? How did you get this number? Rumi, I told you to stop calling my motel. I need to be alone for a long time, ride the empty train over the bridge back and forth, commune with Whitman above the East River. Where else do you go to ask when summer cherry pit spits questions into your lap? Whose ghost do I see on street corners? When does the weight lift? What do I do with this little bit of time I’ve caught to live inside? What do I do now I want to eat every apple, seed stem core? Who belongs, who decides? Does want end with get? And if not – ————————————– Birch Wiley called us from Brooklyn, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"Monter Drive" by Colette Love Hilliard 1:04

5 weeks ago1:04

1:04

We learned to love the birds. The backyard bird with her black cap and white cheeks. The flicker so flirty in his polka dot dress and red scarf. The bus-stop-bird who mocked us each morning with a mixtape of songs by someone else. We learned to love the bones. The mismatched shingles on the mansard roof and the pumpkin-colored door. The wrought iron staircase and windflower wallpaper– the backdrop for crushed velvet dresses and top hats. We learned to love the pool. The feeling of lungs so full of breath we learned to live underwater. Our fins unfurled and settled at the bottom of the ceramic basin. The sub-aquatic sounds, muted and muddy, but unmistakably mermaid. We learned to love through frayed feathers and stone skin and saltwater dreams. We learned to love through all the silly seriousness of being immortal teens. ————————————– Colette Love Hilliard called us from St. Louis, MO. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"Lamb's Ear and Lavender" by Tonee Mae Moll 1:16

5 weeks ago1:16

1:16

We failed, you & I, to care for plants we potted at the start of summer—lamb’s ear & lavender, one for each pocket. You told me you loved to stroke the soft fur of the hedgenettle & the smell of your hands upon pinching a switch of lavender & I said I loved our hands together, futuring something into soil. Then we failed in miniature each day, forgetting the attention required for something gentle to thrive, until, too late, we realized that they were barely holding on; that—whether whither or rot—something had soured as we went about separate summers; that we could not now feed them all at once without drowning; that every living thing wants for water, care, hands, and to be thought of every day. ————————————– Tonee Mae Moll called us from Baltimore, MD. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"Knowledge" by Sandra Marchetti 1:10

5 weeks ago1:10

1:10

They say it can’t be, but it is, perfect. What they don’t know is that clocks circle the drain like pasta water, unasked questions we both know answers for. After some time we actually did become psychic—I know another life flickers somewhere in your mind, yet you come home to guess at The Price Is Right. It says I have seen what God does and the endoscopy, and I could not find another crevice through which to love you—whatever hasn’t been said is whispered over and again as we hang in the blackness of the in-between dotted with blue, white, and red giants. ————————————– Sandra Marchetti called us from Lisle, IL. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"It's Not About That" by Maureen Martinez 2:13

5 weeks ago2:13

2:13

It’s not about who made the mistake with the wrong address in the GPS getting us to Brooklyn an hour late, is it? It’s about your retirement and our finances, and a 20-something living in our house without employment but with a car payment. It’s about the four scrapings the dermatologist did this summer to determine if I have another basal cell carcinoma. It’s about the arthritis that’s making my fingers achy and your neck pain from past injuries stealing your sleep and making you cranky. It’s about the rising prices on the three bedroom houses with a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains we’ve been dreaming about since ‘19. It’s about Sandy who we visited Wednesday at the assisted living facility and her forgetting the names of her grandchildren because of that nefarious bitch, Dementia. Getting off the elevator to see her, we were hit with the thick odor of overripe flesh, like forgotten Georgia peaches adrift on scorched Southern grass in August. She was lining the hallway of patients in front of the nurse’s station, a parade of motionless commuters waiting for a train never coming, together simmering in a fragrant stew of steaming blankness, backs to the wall, heads lolling forward onto their avian chests. But I digress. Arguing about who did what is a distraction, yes? Blaming and projecting emotions like anger are easier to manage than our current circumstances. If we end up like this, let’s promise to go to the home together and sit next to each other touching elbows in our matching sweatpants with elastic bands as I misdirect your attention again by shouting Look at that! While giggling and pointing to the left in order to snatch another fry from your unbreakable plate and you happily letting me do it. ————————————– Maureen Martinez called us from Bronx, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"i'm overdue for a dream in which my teeth fall out" by nat raum 0:50

5 weeks ago0:50

0:50

that's a euphemism—yes, i have cavities, but it means i am bullet train, bound for collision. i am jar of marbles broken across a concrete floor. i am the rise of the seas. what i lack in control i make up for in firepower and i should not be given an excuse to start shooting. i am landslide tornado earthquake wildfire, ready to raise hell, ask questions later. i put the disorder in bpd and my nightmares like to remind me. i close my eyes, see incisor pop softly out of gumline. run tongue through bloody mouth, lose teeth like i used to cut corn off the cob. same time tomorrow night. ————————————– nat raum called us from Baltimore, MD. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems…

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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"I Tell You I Grew From Dawn" by Oisín Rowe 1:11

5 weeks ago1:11