I passed it unawares, others fallen, rotting with perfume pervasive as the gnats forming my halo and feasting delicately on the membranes of my ears and eyes.
I knew the yew had metaphorical heft, but failed to remember the sources. Nowadays memory fails faster than legs which also begin to falter halfway.
Nothing prepares you for death— isn’t quite true. We know in our bones that shadow from the hill will only lengthen as the day wears on.
Yew, I never knew you in your glory, having never walked these woods. But is it a crime to feel no sadness for a tree that perished naturally?
I walk toward a clearing, heavy in my heart and heavier-legged as I seek something more than communion with a natural death.
Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet and storyteller. His work appears in a number of print and online journals.
I have stolen the dandelions scattered their seeds across
fields of tulips and tamarind I have felt desire crack
my lips apart under the weight of its slippery skin
What fresh figs, what sunny flowers What breaking hearts
rot beneath the hills beneath sticky sidewalk pavements
We grow older but not duller hovering translucent over
calendar time
Sara Whittemore is a poet living in Houston, Texas. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa. Her work has recently appeared in Interim Magazine, Juniper Press and Tiny Spoon, and others. In addition to being a poet she is an artist, alien and cat person. You can find her on instagram @sarafromsaturn.
brutalized attacked and slandered beaten throughout centuries wandering through a mist of sorrow through world wars through a cemetery the size of the Sea of Reeds
then blessed by God and nations and given back their homeland holy land returned to Zion oh Israel oh holy land oh El Elohe Yisrael oh The Mighty One God of Israel
how terrifying you’ve become how brutal your power how punishing your vengeance how bloody your hands
you’ve let loose the leash of the angels of the apocalypse upon your neighbors and upon their land God’s hell has risen
now the broken people now the occupied the scattered descendants of the conquered bombed to dust their hospitals their places of worship their schools their people their children their lineage their line of hope obliterated in the constant barrage of revenge
only the law of God matters El Elohe Yisrael only the law of Israel above the laws of men of war of nations above the internationals from above comes the law from above the blessing of violations of wanton cruelty from above the blessings of starvation the blessings of suffering the blessings of obliteration of the grave of the dark
terror begets terror begets terror begets the horror show begets infinite suffering a sea of tears a grand canyon of corpses
for your neighbors not mercy but broken bones not compassion but severed bodies for your neighbors there is no salt no bread no wine but disease starvation and poisoned water
oh Palestine the world watches and not much is done and what is done seems as spit into the wind as spit on to the face of Palestine
Palestine no mother’s day Palestine no fourth of July Palestine no apple pie no answers from Salat no call from God no response from the deepening chorus of mourning echoing out toward Mecca and bouncing off the Kaaba
Ted Vaca is a Denver area based poet and performer. He began writing steadily in the late 1980’s in his home state of California. He has been published in numerous publications and has self-published two chapbooks. He is a member of the 1995 Asheville National Slam Poetry Championship team. He is a founding member of The Mercury Cafe Poetry Slam, (Denver, CO.) established in 2000, and ongoing since then. He is the coach of the 2006 Mercury Cafe Slam Championship team. He has hosted countless poetry readings and slams and special events throughout his 35-plus years in catering toward poetic pursuits.
Ted is an award winner of Colorado’s Lulu award for accomplishments in poetry and The James Ryan Morris Tombstone award.
Ted has worked for Art from Ashes, a Colorado based not for profit that encourages and teaches healing through art therapy, catering to youth in illness and at risk.
Fished a moth presumably Miller out the coffee pot presumably dead.
Again, no talent for judging life.
Everything learning to walk is Bambi except for people.
I hate moths and hate them more when they’re dying in front of me. So stunting. So honestly dying. The gall.
drank the coffee of course i drank the coffee boringly. To myself. I wouldn’t write the poem if I didn’t drink The Mothra Jus Wouldn’t submit the poem if I didn’t drink The Mothra Jus And there’s flavor in being misunderstood Pollinators. So, yes, down.
Burned my feet on the fire escape Where it dried out in a bad way something awful uncomfortably.
Then life again more than caffeinated only so poisoned
drowning those on the surface underneath it’s downpour
you are very much as the spring this year
we can only pray hope is real practice deep breaths plan in positive accord
as in what may grow
closer
perhaps the squirrels will not eat the strawberries but better to put a barrier between them and the fruit
I’m sure the weeds and wild grass will stay a few weeks more green before the summer sizzle
maybe we may take advantage of both the growing tumble and the withering
to pull from the rain and the land the best we can
to add to the home we share within us
set the table prepare the meal and may neither one of us be cut
the cosmic within and without
BY TED VACA
YOU MIGHT WANT
to think deeply
about where you
come from
To Think Deeply About Where You Come From
TO
THINK DEEPLY
ABOUT WHERE
YOU COME
FROM
to think
deeply
about
to open the eternal
gold-fringe lined
burgundy curtain
on the stage manager's signal
let the show begin
step upon the stage
stomach in turmoil
mind electric
your eyes
wide wild
and excited
to accept what is
within
is without
to accept what is
without is within
the universe s
s p
l i
a r
out and in
unfolds engulfs
consistently for a manufactured
lineage of time
the universe
doesn’t care about
TIME
time manmade time the cursor
from birth to death and how much
can you accomplish
time the accomplishment
measure of worth and meaning
time the killer the waste of
the sought after for proof of
deeds and diplomas
the microscopic
is C O S M I C
the cosmic is
microscopic
the embryo in their sack
utero evolving galaxies
spinning and star beings
born in a chemical-chance
at becoming only to be seen
in awe by the dark matter
that surrounds
Incomprehensible!
our eternal selfs
witnessed
mirrored not above
not below
but all around
breaking the novelty of direction
the compass explodes and the earthly mind
is set free of dimensions then intuned with the way
then again becoming unknown
as a dream
separated
from the expansion
we’ve not far to go
to reach & realize
Ted Vaca, Denver poet father lover crime fighter / semi holy somewhat sweet can be bitter / published here and there / Founder of The Mercury Cafe poetry slam / Coach of the 2006 Championship Denver Slam Team / Member of 1995 Championship slam team from Asheville NC / Intergalactic Provocateur
Incantation to my Wisdom Teeth
I imagine you being lifted up and out
easily
not by the touch
of an object or an instrument
or a hand
but by way
of your own command.
I see you floating out
as if you simply
wanted to leave–
no force, no ache, no blood.
After,
you are not gone from me
but returned
to the Earth, to the Air.
You are less bone
than soil
less soil than sky.
You are four moons
in the soft night
so there is no part of me
that needs to be healed
only these glowing orbs
that I have known.
And now, they have
relinquished me.
Ode to the Barn Swallow
I love a beautiful bird
that cracks open the daybreak
and re-configures the setting
of the sun. I take her into me.
Everything I know of touch
has been learned from the gloss
of her feathers
and the swallow
down her orange throat.
When I am to finally live,
it will be with the arrival
of hope. The hope
that she will surrender
the whole sky
that was once under
her wings so that she
might return to me.
On Prince Edward Island
a corridor opens
along a path of red pines
long necks
reaching toward a starless
November, dirt like burnt sugar
litters the path I ache
to taste it
but pine needles lace
in and out, at once sharp,
and when the night settles, soft
I am searching for pieces of broken
promises, but when I tire
I will turn myself in
Jessica Bagwell is primarily a poet, but also dabbles in creative nonfiction. Her work appears in Needle Poetry, Sorin Oak Review, and New Literati. In her poems, she pays homage to the lyric and explores formal experimentalism. When she is not writing, she enjoys practicing & teaching yoga, taking long walks, and sampling local breweries with her partner.
Our ship cuts a quiet wake across the Río de la Plata The harbor of Buenos Aires slow motions away from us The muddy haze of pollution hangs within the labyrinths of canyon streets, thick o’er the poor south barrios
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The fringed skyline further behind us now The sun silverplates the water, dead fish bobbing Ships far asea coming in or leaving this port & to our east the dark risen shore of Uruguay
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Wind strong up on the deck, slicing the bright sun That once-far bank & isles nearing, heavy with thick-leafed trees
Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour whose poetry appears in over 400 journals on six continents, and 20 collections of poetry – including On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019), Caribbean Interludes (Origami Poems Project, 2022) and the upcoming In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2011) and thrice nominated for the Best of the Net. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her adventures at www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or https://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.
Sniffling nose, French braids just a little frazzled, mainly the mid left of the twins, Neck crooked down over a phone knook’d away in her lap, as she’s sitting on the barstool, crossed-legged, like the line from a Jason Isbell song, “Elephant”, that doesn’t need to be heard more than once, unless songs with E Minor hammer-ons, men who bang women before cancer takes the last shot and the indignity of death is your kind of driving vibe.
A question as thick and as gentle as a trunk lays on my shoulder, again:What music do you listen to these days, so many years later? You were so young, the world has grown so ol…
I do my best to shrug the weight of it from me, but I hear it’s somber, patient bellowed breath
As my crossed-legged friend and I both sip from our pre-shift pints, We stare at our phones for a while, and the bellows seem almost gone. She washes dishes behind the counter and chides about moving a new mattress in with her boyfriend who thinks he can do it all, and the folks around me chuckle and grin but
The trunk lets out a hot, woeful snort at the word boyfriend and my mind, my heart, since September and all the more in that moment, is pressed over there, wherever you might be
Because I don’t know…The trunk coils kindly…where you are…It coils tighter, I can feel the hundreds of muscle ridges pressing along the lines of my clavicle…I don’t know if you are still…Here…With us. The trunk twists softly, I feel its leathery skin, and thousands of whiskery vibraissie scan my temples as I release seven words that hang on my heart heavier than the 7-ton creature behind me.
I don’t know what happened to you.
My friend and some customers are sharing beer-tender memes and shooting the shit, and they would tell you that I was, I suppose. Words came out mouths and glasses were filled/refilled they say, but I only paid attention to the rumbles of the breathing, vibrating through the massive, right tusk I laid my head against, as I ask: Areyou resigned to the futility of failing to relax between shifts like my frazzled French braided friend beside me, smirking as the freshly tapped pale ales pass from her hands to folks encircled with Pretty Lights playing overhead? What shows have you seen? Which stage lights have passed over that childhood scar from the pit bull on your left and the fence on your right?Whose arms center you tightly at packed festivals, whose voice fills you up and fills up the car rides to concerts? I remember when they told me you jumped out of your father’s truck while he drove. Out, out, out, your mind screamed from its fog, before the morning marine layer even had a chance to blow past our campus. Who is there to hold you kindly, when the world tries to tear you apart?
Oh, oh right—I lift my head from the tusk—bed, beds-and-moving, people laughing by me, sour beer someone put in my hand, lift it up as my friend wipes the counter but its snout thwaps between my shoulder blades, so I swivel in my stool, my hand moving along the left tusk, and I stand and ask Areyou spraying down tables with windex and rolling out the bullshit of life from your shoulders, as you recall its daily dose by declaring that you will lay on that queen sized mattress at the base of the stairs rather than fall down a flight while carrying the couch because this move with your man is…is someone carrying you to bed and wiping your hair off the floor? Like that song?Is the weight of the world bearing down on your smile, the one I remember, as you and the girls stuffed trash bags to the brim, smucker’s brand crustables wrappers, half eaten red apples, milk cartons, symbols of simpler, sweeter times to live.
It’s bellowing breaths are long and woeful, and synced with mine as I walk closer to ask Live…do you live with dignity? More than ‘do you live’ do youlive with, that Latin word I wrote on the white board everyday before the bell, had us repeat in chorus as a class, that class theme, when students still had the pre-covid mental focus to not merely rotely remember but find real rhythm in a theme? That word that inscribed itself on the hearts of the goody two shoes girls who loved you unconditionally and always posed for class pics with you because no matter what y’all were the squad, as different as you were, that word that is burning behind my eyes and along the ridges of my mind, the base of my larynx and the hollow of my voice.
Anima
It’s tail is swish-swishing softly as I declare that word, anima, so I move closer, it’s lengthy eyelashes almost touching the brim of my ballcap, I say it again, Anima! We’d call out with grins before the exit bell. Anima, I’d tell you as I took a knee beside you lowered, on the days you were high as a kite, or elevated in anger from the shouts and screams surrounding home, or falling into exhaustion in the cradle of your plastic flimsy class seat and you’d find your hands loosening their clench around your mascot emblazoned pencil when we’d look at one another and say: “Anima.” A life full of life. That’s how we defined it.
The elephant saunters off, and I am left with you on my heart at the bar, until I let you go too with this benediction: May you rub that word, anima, into the helix and antihelix of your right ear for others to smell when they draw in close to hug you, may you dip your toothbrush in it to keep it on your breath before bed, may it be hummed in the cadence of your morning stroller jogs, with at least one squad mate, the one who wrote to me on my birthday so many years ago, and told me at 15 that you are a
beautiful and hardworking
mom.
Anima. Are you living, are you living with a life full of life, Teresita?
Kevin Foote (he/him) is a writer, teacher, and explorer. He was born and raised on The Central Coast of California, but now calls Green Mountain his home. When he’s not in class with his students, he loves investigating restaurants in the Denver region, trail running, and inviting friends and followers into the writing process online and in poetry slams. Kevin’s first collection, Cabin Pressure, is a work full of the woe and wonder of teaching, the unsung moments of victory in mental health struggles, and the unabashed joy of experiencing the natural world along The Front Range. You can see his published poems and works in progress on @feastsonfoote
a sweet ball, organic and tender, but it’s another to blank and piss and smack real
people around just to see what we can take until we eat us sugared flesh from candied bone this
unspooled ticking wild heart the last last god
As Hunger for Melon
How close sweetness is to rot. Begging and easy to want. Leave the hard-won water of astringent rind. Hold something darker in the mouth, something so close to loss you feel it on the bone. Give honey, give wine. Fill a plate, a belly, a chalice. Let the sick light of midday collapse the tender center; let the bees get drunk and dream through the neon bulldoze of the afternoon. Spit the seeds, or swallow. Cry when swallows slice the sky. Red life, swollen, falls out.
Magic Lessons (Meditations from an afternoon stroll)
The car that passed thumped a Fleetwood Mac bassline and deep inside my cranium I am still five years old afraid of spaces that contain only me; no guardian to hold. I catch a whiff of vinegar, and I think of my lover. His naturally upturned mouth, and his eyes soft like soil after the storm has passed. I look at the wildflowers, and think of all the graveyards I would like to contain me. Heart no longer beating, just a garden my grandmother used to tend to, once teeming with fuchsia and dandelion. In my dreams that night, I tell auntie Ayreen about she, who looked like lavender skies. Her head haloed with stray blonde strands, iridescent under the setting sun. There is magic in this earth. It lives in pinecones, in the sound of the TV from the next room, and in fields overrun with weeds; in the sea that roars itself a drumroll, perpetually announcing its undulating waves. The magic is the quiet victory of knowing the guarantees of the earth. The sun will rise and it will set, grief will endure and so will love. We’ve come so far that we can see it all coming. And yet – miraculously, tenderly, this special pocket of the universe surprises us anyway.
south broadway press 
