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
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.
Separated, yet inseparable. Invented, yet genuine as pain. Perhaps all women do this—split
Ourselves, brutally cutting the pulsing wood of our psyches, dividing into two branches of self.
One—the withered limb, desiccated by the outer blow. The other—still bright with possibility, the ‘might have been.’
The before, the after. The killing stroke that always comes. Ironic that ‘growing up’ halts growth, strips all our weakness bare.
Perhaps inevitable—that we are no longer alive with possibility. But once shattered, we are still fed by childhood.
Strength still trickles in. Our other half still pumps blood into the damaged core, those uprooted roots. Believes that miracles still exist.
Perhaps all women do this—we replant in our own fallow bodies, over and over, gestating our own rebirth. Perhaps we separate
So there is still someone to offer succor, still someone to love that withered limb, still someone to hold onto to hope.
Perhaps all women do this—we survive.
Amy Wray Irish was raised on regular visits to The Chicago Art Museum, where she developed her passion for writing about art and history. Her 2020 chapbook, Breathing Fire, received the Fledge Award from Middle Creek Publishing. Her forthcoming chapbook, Down to the Bone: Poetry for a Post-Roe World, was the winner of Poetry Mesa’s 2022 chapbook contest. To read more of her work, go to amywrayirish.com.
Oh poets and their peonies! “As big as human heads” Jane Kenyon exalts, her pen heavy with extravagant language, enormous metaphors as big as life.
The perfume of such heady description smothers me, face-first in the reproduction of perfumed pistol and stamen. Yet it keeps the real makings of this craft at a distance.
Amongst poets, there’s a secret censorship of creation surrounding their beloved peonies— afraid too close they’ll catch the inner workings of such art.
Aware they’ll see, let’s be honest, the ants. Mary Oliver admits they exist. That something dark and alien spiders across this beauty.
She knows that a necessity for budding is this cutting, this eating. Knows that the cataract of leaves covering the bud must feed the hungry just enough. Must just hold back the swarm to unlock the flower’s form.
These thousand tiny bites release a poem as well. The flowering depends on it yet can also kill. So we unleash the ants but prevent such furtive legs from going too far within. Allow the justice of devouring so that the exquisite sweetness opens.
Inside any creation is a little taste of destruction. To pretend otherwise would be outrageous.
Amy Wray Irish (she/her/hers) grew up near Chicago, received her MFA from the University of Notre Dame, then fled the Midwest for Colorado sunshine. She has been published in Spit Poet Zine and Thought for Food; she has work upcoming in Progenitor and Chiaroscuro. Her third chapbook, Breathing Fire, won the 2020 Fledge Competition and is now available from MiddleCreek Publishing. For more information go to amywrayirish.com.
When I reach to select the fruit appearing most plump and ripe my thumb plunges in, straight through skin, meat, seeds, core until it meets my fingers creating a perfect circle.
Its all beautiful pulp in my palm. No mold or rot here. I hold a handful of sweet stickiness, a shock of soft flesh. The surprise forces a small ha of breath to escape me, a moment of delight that I then extend to you.
Not as temptation. More as proof. Reflexively, instinctively, I share this sensation and offer you connection— thinking that we share a rib, a mythology. Any knowledge for or against this is a fruit I have yet to bite.
Amy Wray Irish grew up immersed in Chicago’s diverse arts scene, then traded Midwest winters for the Rocky Mountains. She has been published both online and in print journals, most recently with Punch Drunk Press and Waving Hands (forthcoming). Irish is a member of Lighthouse Writers, Columbine Poets, and Turkey Buzzard Press; her chapbooks include Creation Stories (2016) and The Nature of the Mother (2019).
This poem is from the Thought For Food anthology, a poetry collection benefiting Denver Food Rescue. You can purchase a copy of the book here.
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