we will see it all she whispers as she pushes into my side pressing flesh between fingers and wand everything looks great
your femur appears from the watery ink
Pause click
prints an image for us to hold
how’s the pressure I can’t decide if she means on my belly or in my heart as the air I breathe moves to your blood you emerge sideways ghostlike from my bloody shore
here’s the aortic arch she speaks to her student who I have allowed in the room to view all that I hold inside
look at those ovaries, beautiful I see only shadows sunken faces then your profile:, elf-like, angelic sagittal view split in half
like when you arrived like every moment since split between two selves
the wand moves again and you sink into black water
Ashley Howell Bunn (she/they) completed her MFA in poetry through Regis University and holds a MA in Literature from Northwestern University. Their work has appeared in many places both in print and online. Their first chapbook, in coming light, was published in 2022 by Middle Creek Publishing and their second chapbook, Living Amends—coauthored with Alexander Shalom Joseph, is forthcoming through Galileo Press . Their work has been supported by Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Sundress Publications. She is an adjunct instructor of English at the Community College of Denver and the Youth Program Coordinator at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She is a certified somatic coach and yoga guide, and she offers somatic writing workshops in-person and virtually. When she isn’t writing, she is practicing yoga, running in the sunshine, playing with her kids, or daydreaming and staring off into space.
We are incredibly excited to announce South Broadway Press‘ 2025 Best of the Net nominations! Please join us in celebrating these wonderful poets.
The Best of the Net is an annual anthology that honors small press literature that was first published online. The anthology is published by Sundress Publications and is open to submissions for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
Best of the Net Nominees
FROM SOUTH BROADWAY GHOST SOCIETY // SUMMER 2025 EDITION
Tyler Hurula (she/they) is the pinkest poet in Denver, Colorado. She strives to be the most queer and polyamorous person they can be. You’ll likely find her parading around in a tiara with hot pink lipstick going to an art walk or discussing the intricacies of the latest horror movie she’s watched with anyone who will listen. Author of chapbook Love Me Louder (Querencia Press) and Too Pretty for Plain Coffee (Wayfarer Books). They have been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes, and were a finalist for the Write Bloody 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Prize Contest.
If you are going to be anything in the world tonight, you better be lightning. You better find something in you honest enough to strike them.
Andrea Gibson
WHAT DOES THIS QUOTE MEAN TO YOU?
This quote is from a poem by Andrea Gibson called What Love Is and I think love is connection, and anything we do is ultimately about connection and love, and the way to do that is by being honest and vulnerable. When you show up in that way, all you can do is hope it resonates with the people you were meant to find.
WHAT BOOKS HAVE MADE AN IMPORTANT IMPACT ON YOU AND WHY?
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
This book is gorgeous. Vuong finds all of these beautiful truths in what it means to be human in the middle of so many things that are not beautiful. He gives himself the freedom to say what he needs to say and to be completely vulnerable by writing it for a mother who will never read it.
The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
I love all things horror, and this was the first book I read by Tremblay. It is absolutely devastating and hopeful, and the only horror novel I’ve ever sobbed at the end of.
My Friends by Fredrick Backman
I am still in the middle of this book, but knew after the first page it would be one of my favorites. Backman is one of the most emotionally intelligent authors, and is able to encapsulate at the root what it means to be human, and how we all connect and relate to each other, even when we have completely different experiences.
WHAT IS THE VALUE OF WRITING AND ART IN THE CURRENT STATE OF THE WORLD?
I took a workshop with Patricia Smith awhile ago and she repeated a quote by someone and I can’t remember the exact quote or who it was originally from, but essentially it was something about when you’re looking for facts, go to the news, but when you’re looking for the truth of something, look to the poets. We have to create and connect with people. Art is how we navigate and contextualize the world. It is how we highlight the truths around us, how we find our human-ness in others, and how we are able to see the human-ness in others as reflected in their art—in how and what they create. In My Friends by Fredrick Backman, he says “art is what we leave of ourselves in other people” and in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong says “Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us?” I like to think that all of my poems are just asking “do you see me?” Art is one of the purest forms of connection, and without it, we have nothing.
HOW HAS WRITING AND ART HELPED TO FORM THE PERSON YOU ARE TODAY?
I grew up in an environment where there were so many secrets I was expected to keep, which led to a very lonely and isolating childhood and young adulthood. Through writing, I’ve been able to share those truths and surround myself with a community and people dedicated to practicing vulnerability and authenticity. I have grown into myself, and have learned to love the whole of myself through writing and art. It’s given me permission to feel all of the things, and be open to experiencing a multitude of truths from a multitude of people.
WHAT IS SOMETHING THAT MATTERS TO YOU?
Building community is so important to me. We simply cannot do this life on our own, and the more people and perspectives we surround ourselves with, the more capable we are to grow together and care for each other.
First, the cherry trees blossom, bursting open into skirted ballerinas filling the boulevard and the White House and the whole nation with pink and white petals (aren’t they pretty?) until their frills fall away and they begin to swell, to reveal their pollination sin, forcing them to bear fruit
far too soon. Young wombs chock full of false promises, bellies sick on syrupy cherry-flavored stories poured down throats, forgetting the choke and force feeding of suffragettes by funnel and pretending to forget the funneling of dollars away from pre-natal planning and post-natal everything, easier to just shut up and take
whatever gets shoved in. The options are a) poison or b) bitter dregs so they swallow and say that it’s sweet but how would they know a good taste in their mouth the truth on their lips
if they’ve only been fed lies. They don’t know someone cherry picked their words and their world. They unknowingly devoured each unripe soundbite and even ate the pit believing they were blessed and precious and special, told they were so pretty and so holy, not knowing it was only so they would pick right at the polls
then be easily pushed aside. Drooping and forgotten, the poor little flowers are falling from the pedestal, dropping from labor and lactation and loss of blood, wilted from so much “women’s work” squeezed from their failing bodies, bound now to the bed they made, unable to pick up their broken pieces to start over or escape
but hey, remember how they were pretty, once?
Amy Wray Irish (she/her) believes poetry’s job is to be both brutally honest and eternally hopeful. Irish has two contest-winning chapbooks (Down to the Bone and Breathing Fire) and numerous other publications. Her work is forthcoming in the 40West Anthology, and the 2026 We’Moon Daily Calendar. Read more of her work at www.amywrayirish.com.
Let’s get off at Osceola And grab our coonskin caps, boys. Forgetting the farmer’s fields And head for the wild patch of land In the corner of yon field And flatten our bodies Against the ground Filling our nostrils with The smell of black Iowa dirt Near the Des Moines River.
Let’s shoot an azimuth of 270 degrees Due west and head westward Past the lank, slank Cowboy towns of Durango Or what’s left of Neal’s Larimer Street. Let’s even taste that black Dirt ‘til it feeds The red bones in us and We’re moving like Natty Bumpo As coyotes at the edge of town.
La Otra
BY GUILLERMO LAZO
Tú eres la tranquilidad En mi cerebro ruidoso Y por tú cara Puedo ver el rostro del universo El universo es el cosmos Es lo que hace nuestro mundo posible Qué hace tú posible Hoy es muy intempestivo de integrar nuestra materia en una canción de existencia como la lluvia en la arena qué hace tú posible
Kynthos
BY GUILLERMO LAZO
On a gravelly road in Germany In the early morning light I write the name of my beloved In the dirt With the toe of my combat boot As I pull guard Her perfumed card Calls me From the Rocky Mountains westward Half a world away As I stand guard Over 37 years of topsoil In the early morning light
She is the Greeks to me She is Kynthos – Diana Protectress of the wild young Purveyor of knowledge And she is America With real wilderness And rawboned hands and puritanical ethic And miles and miles of endless onset.
Guillermo Lazo was born and raised in Chicago. Univ of Illinois BA Ed 1974. Univ of Colorado BA Literature 1986. Editor and Publisher of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal of the Arts (Poetry Magazine 1978-1984). Author of Surround Me As Burlap (Pueblo Poetry Project 1980 Pueblo, CO), Ching Poems (March Abrazo Press, Carlos Cumpian ed.), Bathers of the Med Sea (1989 Baculite Publishing – Canadian Printing). Articles: Confessions of a Marrano (Halapid Magazine Anousim Society of Crypto Jews 2001).
i destroy myself with a slow grind pressing my body against the bitter wheel at any sign of sharp success polishing away the burrs of hope and joy until i am pebble forgotten in the crush of boots
Passion
BY JOSEPH WILCOX
at easter brunch as we douse the bulge of egg casserole and sweetbread in our stomachs with fresh hot coffee like a post-coital cigarette my brother extolls the virtues of the stock market how he cheers the ups and downs as he buys low and his millions grow he pauses righteousness rising to rail at the cross of his tax burden the unconstitutional waste of government taking his money and the onus of minimum wage that shrouds his body corporate to my sister who earns $15 an hour retail
Factious
BY JOSEPH WILCOX
don’t you see? if we are fighting each other we are not fighting them if we are fighting each other we won’t go to the shed to find our pitchforks
would you like to borrow one of mine, friend?
Joseph Wilcox studied at the Jack Kerouac School, started a theater company, and raised a family in Colorado. He lives in Aurora where he writes science fiction and fantasy, and poetry in the sleepless hours of the night.
We’re gathered here in this sacred place Darting looks of judgement and envy You still manage to pull a sour face As the imam gives the khutba about how to love thy neighbor I look down at their feet, calloused but not withered It’s as if I can read their lives from their feet
Every untrimmed nail and hard blue vein Running after children No time to thrive, only maintain Resilient, despite the shock of motherhood Dressed in burnt orange Salwar Kameez and glass gold bangles The baby coos and gurgles until the azan comes Then its shrill cries and a burst of tears How dare their mother do something for herself? Religious commitments don’t end Such tribulations only make them more clear
Babies, an extension of their mother until around age four Then one day their need for cuddles suddenly ends And the only remembrance is saggy pillows and stretch marks Designed like directions on a map
Despite the sleepless nights and loss of time Soon the baby discovers their own independence He sits nicely as his mother prays sunnah He fixes his own hat when it falls Like kneading dough, she forms to the chapter of her life Her tests become her triumphs, her loss is what she gained
I make a dua after Jummah, thanking God for His preference The little things I cherish, take the good with the bad How can you appreciate God’s gifts? If it’s honey all the time Sometimes we have to feel the sting
Mimi Khoso is not great at short biographies, and the pressure it causes to make an appealing impression in short summary. She does understand the need for it however; she was born in Georgia in 2002, and has moved all over Georgia and Texas during her childhood. She doesn’t have any professional credentials for writing poetry. She believes that once you discover your passion it gives meaning to your life. Her favorite book is The Beguiled by Thomas P. Cullinan and her favorite song is Saanson Ki Maala, based on the 16th-century poem by Mirabai then popularized by sufi singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. She has realized what makes celebrated films and timeless music profound is in its words. One of the great pleasures in her life is reading and writing and she is not fully able to explain why. When she converted to Islam over four years ago, she read of its deniers claiming the Quran to merely be a great work of poetry. To that, God responded to produce a verse similar to His if you can.
in the center of the bowl, a still life for a still life,
reflecting sweet and sour gem, blinding, squinting at the fruit of it,
glistens a warm memory, juice weeping between the fingers
A pucker, confetti of pulp in the belly. Bloated with remedial fullness.
Lydia Ford is a poet based in Colorado, where she lives with her boyfriend and two cats, Melon and Zuko. Her work has been published in Words Dance Magazine, Ink & Marrow, boats against the current, Beyond Words Magazine and wildscape lit. You can often find her in her local coffee shop, probably telling someone about the music playing overhead or her love of nostalgia. More of her work lives on Instagram @lydfordwrites
Tributaries: A Beautiful Opportunity to Lose Our Way
BY BRICE MAIURRO
The first thing I heard in these poems was a heartbeat. In his opening poem “All Water Has Perfect Memory”, an allusion to a Toni Morrison line, the rhythm for me was that same rhythm at the start of Dark Side of the Moon. The book begins with the sense of a heartbeat growing louder and louder each moment. Everett’s first collection of poetry, Tributaries, continues to carry that heartbeat, and the sorrow between its beats, throughout this literary confluence of moments. Moments among a greater sense of we, the ecological we.
In his poetry, Everett’s time is the earth’s time. These poems are not contained to the one-hundred-ish years of a human life but zoomed out and slowed down. They connect us to a very clear something greater than our singular journey as a human being on this planet. It is hard to tell where he ends and the rest of Mother Earth begins. He reminds us of this truth for all of us. The poems are in conversation with one another, compounding the complex yet approachable mezclado of this book. The Osage dance with the Cottonwoods dancing with the stream below them, all tributaries feeding into the heart of this poet. Everett is spellcasting here; calling in the healing of the earth and sounding the cautionary canary for its woes.
In addition to spellcaster, Everett serves as field guide, death doula, and eternal student in these poems. These poems are “always hungry” to listen more. In these poems, our fellow living beings, the Great Horned Owl, Coyote, the Bison, are much more teacher than metaphor. There is an admirable equanimity in Everett’s work (and play). He explores the distance between here and home, where home is the same home we find in “eco-”. Everett, as are we, is water, in the words of Toni Morrison, “trying to get back to where it once was”.
“Poets, remember to listen”, says Everett in “Populus deltoides”, “to breathe in the vanilla of resin”. Everett has a knack for imagery (see lines like: “blue hunger”; “cloudless teeth”). He sets scenes magically, and then returns to the reader in a very direct and curious way, as if it were a conversation over a cup of shade grown coffee. I find the agrarian salt-of-the-earth wisdom of these poems reminiscent of Wendell Berry, a fellow poet captivated by the rural. Everett himself is from the “windtossed flatlands of southeast Kansas”, which he visits often in this collection. The poems are biography; confessional poetry of the landscapes and experiences that shaped him and his words.
The poem “Geraniums” in particular stood out to me, with visceral lines like “a blackbird flies backwards from tinted window”. In very intentional moments, Everett captures the core of surrealism: not to immerse the reader in a dream, but to attempt to liberate our colonized minds. Everett has a poetic conviction. When he says “it is better to speak in chrysanthemums”, he speaks from experience. He “plants the seeds in the mouths of everyone” he meets.
Shorter poems like “Pine Trees Covered in Snow” show us that Everett can be potent while being concise. These interludes to longer readings act as heartpunches, steering the collection along.
I often have a hard time with questions posed in poetry, finding them to be navel-gazing or overdramatic shenanigans, however I found myself enamoured of the questions Everett poses. Questions like “Do horses hide in my blonde waves?” where the goal seems not to send you into a philosophical spiral but to invite you into the great curiosity and wonder of this poet. Phrases like “amanita dreams” have me asking my own questions with that same curiosity – what is an amanita dream? What colors would I find there? What shamanic doors can be opened by being more curious about the world of our fungi friends?
In the words of our Colorado Poet Laureate, Andrea Gibson, “it hurts to become”; this collection pushes through the pain of the Anthropocene becoming something more alive, revealing limbs reaching for a better world. The poems in this collection are never so binary to choose to be a meditation on climate grief or to choose to elevate the natural world. They are a both/and, a queering, an honesty. There is a beautiful disobedience that Everett encourages us to join him for, where we too “ignore the no trespassing warnings”, “follow the river” and lose our way.
Brice Maiurro (he/they) is the Editor-in-Chief of South Broadway Press. Hailing from Lakewood, CO., he is the author of four collections of poetry, including Stupid Flowers and The Heart is an Undertaker Bee. His poetry has been published by South Florida Poetry Journal, Denverse, The Denver Post, Boulder Weekly, Suspect Press, and Poets Reading the News. Website: www.maiurro.co
a man opens his mouth & a border spills out. a grandmother unspools her tongue like thread, stitching her children into the fabric of a country that never wanted them.
they say this is progress.
(they mean:) the skin thinned to paper — the hands blistered, still reaching — the lungs filled with air thick enough to swallow. (they mean:) look how well you have learned to survive. how your bones folded neatly into history. but we know. we know what it means to be asked for our papers. to be split between two alphabets & never whole. to carve out our own faces with the sharpest vowels until we are palatable. marketable. safe.
(they say we are lucky to be here.) lucky.
lucky like my mother learning
the price of shame at the grocery store. (the clerk’s mouth curling around her accent another thing she must swallow whole.)
lucky like my father with his hands roughened by the steel of a land he could never own. (the factory hums. the sweat dries. the paycheck arrives. the hunger stays.) (somewhere) they are building monuments from the bones of the silenced.
(somewhere) the land forgets the sound of its own name. concrete buries it whole.
this is history, they say. (they mean:) the textbooks that forget us — the flags stitched with the tongues we lost — the songs we were too tired to sing.
(they say we should be grateful.) (they mean we should be quiet.)
but i remember. i remember the rice fields & the rivers thick with ghosts. the prayers my grandmother whispered to the soil. the stories that split her open & stayed.
they say the rice won’t grow without blood. (and still, we eat.)
Sreeja Naskar is a high school poet based in India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poems India, Crowstep Journal, The Chakkar, ONE ART, Frigg Magazine, The Little Journal, and Cordite Poetry Review, among others. She believes in the quiet power of language to unearth what lingers beneath silence.
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