Three Poems – Dani Ferrara

January 20, 2020January 15, 2020 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Music

was it worth it?

shaving your shoulders

the hard echo

in the last sip

re-focusing on money

your dress

the absent cigarette

skeltering in a narrow hallway

laughter that never happened

maroon carpet with years of saliva

others now ghosts of themselves

if you imagined the way it could be

you’d run too far

your stomach would hurt

we were friends

i saw you

gliding

while walking by

this, a single day.

this, my life.

she wants to say more

she wants to re-format

she wants to engulf

she wants to replay

the flowers flowing

down your dress

Memory

i feel i am old

because i watch myself

as though from the future

i want to give it time

but the worms are back

i am soil made of nothing

i am a fucked ant

i am intolerable to god

Swerve

they brushed their teeth

it was alright

we could talk about anything here

the books scattered, obviously

or the video games

life fades into love

i’ll see you again

dani headshot

Dani Ferrara is a poet, writing teacher, and self-proclaimed ‘pataphysician. She proudly graduated with an MFA from the School of Disembodied Poetics alongside some of the most incredible writers she’s ever met. Her work has been featured in Dream Pop Press and Black Sun Lit. She is in three garage bands: Warm Dad, Bad Bath, and The Spellmans. She is also part of the extended Black Market Translation Orchestra. Dani lives in Denver. [Daniferrarapoet.com]

Department Store – Shane Allison

January 16, 2020January 15, 2020 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

All bed pillows
All beach towels
All down comforters
All wall décor frame framed wall art and mirrors
All frames, albums and scrapbook kits
All custom decorating galaxy collection fabrics
All bath rugs
All solid color towels
All sheets and sheet sets
All blankets and throws
All bed-in-a-bag comforter sets, bedspreads and quilts
All juvenile bedding and accessories
All mattress pads
All games and clocks
All mattress and metal pads
All wicker bath accents
All accent and area rugs
All decorative pillows
All table linens
All decorative accessories and replacement shades
All pet gifts
All bath accessories
All shower curtains
All bath scales
All Comfort Zone therapeutic pillows
All Comfort Zone therapeutic mattress pads
All bedroom furniture
All dining rooms plus two free chairs w/ a 5-pc set purchase
All home office and entertainment centers
All sectionals, sofas and recliners
All occasional tables
All accent furniture and curios
All furniture accessories
All ready-made window coverings
All home collection candles

Are 30 percent off of regular price

Fifteen years old was when Shane Allison wrote his first poem. Since then his poems have appeared in countless kick ass literary journals such as Chiron Review, West Wind Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and others. He is the author of four collections of poetry. His new collection Sweet Sweat is out from Hysterical Books. He is also the author of two novels. Harm Done and You’re the One That I Want.

It’s Not Polite to Stare at Body Autonomy – Shawnie Hamer

January 15, 2020January 8, 2020 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Body Autonomy sits next to M & I at a bar named Vesuvius. The kind of place people sit facing north, & maybe each other when the weather is right. Josie the bartender is chatting up a couple a few stools down, shows them a video of Johnny Marr playing a Clash cover to her in Los Angeles. “You are very magnetic,” M says. Josie free-pours silver tequila into cold glasses, says “I know.” Body asks for a remote to the tired TV, flips through channels, mumbles mention of the news headline, a mother pleading for assistance in finding her 17-year-old son, who left in the night to a city she can’t quite name or find on a map. “The heart leaves when we don’t make a home for it,” he whispers into his whiskey lemonade. I don’t feel the need to leave.
…

…..
M & I stop to stretch our legs in a tiny town named Big Sur but isn’t actually named Big Sur. A town of stasis, of pausing movement while inertia presses forward in form of rented RV & restless toddlers. A town built on trinkets & organic oils & overpriced rooms. I light a smoke, stretch— one in the same, these days— M snaps analog photos of flowers that sway palm tree green. Body walks by in overalls & combat boots, long blonde hair. She places time-worn lips together into red highway line, hums, “Yummmmmmmm. You don’t see enough people smoking these days.” Swings her bag of chips like a little sis as she continues seaside.
…

…….
My parents haven’t seen Body in years. Met them once at a corner on Baker Street. In aisle 5 shopping for Frosted Flakes. A sticky interaction, one worn like memory, like cut-off jean jacket hiding in the back of the closet. When M & I leave for Highway 1, they feel the grief. Miss Body, wish their children could have seen the swag of their grin, heard the sharp cuts of Body’s laugh. They want to tell us these things, want to postpone the distance, but say “Be careful” instead.
…

……..
M & I stop for gas in North Lake Tahoe. We barely make the sunset, water lava-lamp-like, holding ground as we stumble over twigs & tired feet to catch a glimpse. We find the cheapest gas in town, only two options. Fill the tank slowly. A busted black Corolla drives in slowly. The teen boys inside open the door, speak slowly. Say, “Hey! Slow down, baby.” M & I move quickly. Body watches from the next pump, filling up his baby blue Bronco. Shakes his head slowly, says nothing.
…
………..
Body agrees that being locked in a car-sized cage & being licked by Kevin Spacey for a year is better than living out every “would you rather” scenario in alternate dimensions, but not by much.
…
……
M & I stay with our friend L in San Francisco. L takes us to their neighborhood bar. Tells us the first time they really felt their legs was when they took rose-oil-infused-ketamine with Queens at a Pride party. Body sings “We Are the Champions” with the karaoke DJ as we take boomerang videos of our apricot beers clinking.
…
……….
M, L, & I talk numbers, how they follow us. M says 5 is her favorite, a sign of luck when she drives the 12 hours from Minnesota to Denver, & then back again. L says seeing 22, 23, & 24 before their 28th birthday lets them know when to leave someone behind. I have an affinity for 32, my first jersey when I was 9. Tell them about the time K told me about my palm. Told me that I’d meet Body when I was 32. Said, “This uncertainty will be gone at 32.” Body passes us on the sidewalk, crosses south to head down Hyde. We head east, back to the car before the meter runs out at 12:45.
…

For Marie, who played 1,632 games of Would-You-Rather with me while we remembered Body’s face.

…….

Author Photo

Shawnie Hamer was born in the heat & dust of Bakersfield, CA. Her first book, the stove is off at home (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) is an experimental art & poetry book curated through a community ritual which focused on the identification & exorcism of trauma. Hamer is the founder of collective.aporia, & a co-conspirator of the off.collective. Her poetry can be found in publications such as Bombay Gin, Tooth n Nail: practical advice from and for the everywoman, The Birds We Piled Loosely, SWP Guerrilla Lit Mag, & Tiny Spoon Lit Mag. She is currently living & creating in France.

four poems – shlesha basnet

January 14, 2020January 8, 2020 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

on my immigration

Grief visited me like a roaring fire
hot
from my round belly.
Sorrow engulfed
me
like a volcano
using me to clear a path for destruction.
Anguish took me by the hair and flung me around
day to day
like a tornado
ripping apart entire towns
launching metal into sky to make electricity.
I couldn’t understand the hunger
of a first true heartbreak
until I lived through the disaster.

model minority

When the white-hot violence finally reaches my community
it is with a shock
because we are the good,
one of the models in minority,
and despite this,
if our bodies are still deemed different
enough to be dispensable,
are we brought to reckon with our internalized shame
that led us to believe our existence depended on
being an unwilling willing confidant to our supposed
benefactors?

To reckon with the idea that
we are better than
those whose land we
occupy
and those whose bodies were
ground to the ground
to build a sense of nation?

where is home?

When you are constantly asked where you are from,
where you belong
while you straddle several worlds,
what choice do you have
but to make yourself your home.
Plant that lovely garden around you
and stay a while.

my english words

My black bata english medium boarding middle school shoes –
glossed and shined.

A singular activity
with black polish on a soft bristled brush
then a hard-bristled brush
that buffed and swiped until
I met the rules on appearance:
my reflections clear on the tops of my shoes
distracted from the black
on my palms,
under my fingers
everyday.

Similarly,
my english words then
were mumbled under breath,
rehearsed out of sight,
practiced until my
assimilation shined
so that
when my father called cable companies
and asked me to interpret his spoken english,
the ear on the other side of the wire would finally understand, would
finally care to hear.
No longer would they laugh and
ask me to repeat
when my Ca-lee-for-nee-ah became kal-uh-fawrn-yuh
and
my cu-tit-ow-tuh became cut-it-out.

marilyn

Shlesha Basnet is a clinical social worker and a part-time dabbler in poetry as a means to self-healing. She was born in Nepal and has resided in Colorado for more than half her life. Shlesha loves to hike, listen to stories, and attempts to love cooking.

b o o k p i l e – matt clifford

January 10, 2020January 9, 2020 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

The books were dumped from a box when I moved out of the house love from jersey built to make room for more books in the box which were dumped on top of the books first put in the box and set on the bottom where the consequences would be obvious I am alone as an ego trapped in a book pile. I have not read a book in one hundred years. I see so many words. They scroll past me at two thousand years per hour. Everybody is a prophet with a platform standing over attention yelling at old men hear me in four corners I am high on the definition of right now. I did not write it down. I slept a sound, dreamt of better saints, temporary, telling stories of what just happened, today we make our own news out of the dirt beneath the dust that gathered on ink left picked up blew off there is a storm coming I can sense it in my eyes. Information it has been reported, sides, who hurt? The corners do not hurt so much if you lay on a side, I am laying on the side facing you, it is comfortable, beautiful, we have built a circle from rectangles, there is no getting out of, the outer language of rhythmic desire, expression at the limit, how to say what is over there, what is over there, escape me. Be here now let us pray. In the beginning, word, then in the end, book, I am looking for a way to begin the book, I haven’t got a word and never want it to end, feeling, lord make me a channel of your objects, lord make our channel an object send someone else to name it, what is that sound? Do I rise and follow its call, is it calling at all, how would I know, it did it again. Want me like a pattern, over over, form never repeating, you are coming to close the covers, I could lie in the dark call it the new thing, it feels better than the last time, it feels together with the last time, it feels like the same thing, like the first day of my life is still going, like I’m a different person than the baby I used to be, that I perceive myself to be, wish, why is my body so sore and when did you get here? Cannot sleep as peaceful as when I was young with these ghosts to stand above, they cannot live like I do and I am not as important. I am an idea the history surrounding me had already. Adapted for TV. With commercial breaks. Write a check Facebook, I am selling mindspace to the highest outbreak for wallets, you should get in on this, we’ve got six hundred pages burning a hole in the budget and five paragraphs to change. I introduced myself in a rage by the thesis opinions were facts the mob concluded, colluded with schoolchildren in the conspiracy of education. Why do they want me to know these things, why do I want to know anything, will it make my dreams more interesting, will I sweat harder, do they hold the cure for fevers? I believe to addiction in a world rewarding faith. I believe in being scared and sickness. Read deep between the lines of idols and practice self-medication. I am talking to myself again when I should be writing. Sometimes it’s more fun not to fuck.

Matt Clifford is a punk rock poet in an instrumental poetry band loving his life away in Denver, Colorado. www.blackmarkettranslation.rocks & www.mattclifford.org

take me to church – kylie ayn yockey

January 9, 2020January 7, 2020 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

you’re a cathedral

…………..stained glass watercolor ink old soul new testament

you look like you know the answers

…………..there’s a finality an apocalypse a heaven-hell-dichotomy to your tone

you found me alone in the elements, dressed in black

…………..hand-held through your opening, hat off hair tucked back

I want to ask so many questions, like what are we—

…………..you rest a finger to your lips, shh it’s time for a baptism

I find discomfort in your pews but kneel, kneel always

Kylie Ayn Yockey headshot

Kylie Ayn Yockey is a queer southern creative with a BA in Creative Writing & Literature. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Glyph, Meow Meow Pow Pow, Night Music Journal, Gravitas, Ordinary Madness, The Stray Branch, Not Very Quiet, Prismatica, Gingerbread House, Butter Press, honey & lime, and Capulet Mag. She has edited for Glyph Magazine, The Louisville Review, Ink & Voices, and is poetry editor for Blood Tree Literature.

naked body // veronica love

January 2, 2020March 4, 2026 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Matt Clifford - Photo Credit Matt Diss ALOC Media

naked body

BY VERONICA LOVE

It sounded like she said,
“Every day when I get home, I find a naked body in the bed.”
And in this light, the lines on her face show the naked worry in her head
As I wonder if the body is awake or sleeping,
there is naked fear inside my chest
And the smell of the other’s cologne in the room is a validation of my dread.
We were always meant to be temporary,
But now I feel as though I am being bled
By a stranger,
One that I thought was a ghost.
A name no longer to be said,
A memory of what once was,
Between the one I love,
And the naked body in her bed.

Veronica Love is a writer of fiction, poetry and editorials. Her work has appeared in several literary journals including Page and Spine and Flash Fiction Addiction. She spends her free times traveling to places rich with culture, reading, writing and laughing. She is always on the lookout for a new and strange adventure and loves dancing in the rain.

Cover Photo: Jp Valery

two prose poems – howie good

January 1, 2020December 19, 2019 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Matt Clifford - Photo Credit Matt Diss ALOC Media

Bad Dream Coma

Your teeth are falling out. You’ve lost your car. A flood is bearing down on you. You’re being chased through dimly lit streets, and though you repeatedly look back, you can’t even see who is chasing you. You’re trying to scream for help. You’re out of breath. What is inside you is going to come out: your dog’s dead body on a blanket on the floor. Your walls and curtains are covered in chemical formulas. You have no idea at all what you’re supposed to say next. You raise your hand for paper and are given a slice of bread.

Song for Ancient Children

I wake up from an afternoon nap on the couch to the thunderclaps of the younger generation chanting, “Fuck the clown! Where’s my clock?” The place is very much alive. It’s like an archipelago whose volcanic islands rise and fall with the waves. I try to believe we’ll be OK, that no one gets forgotten simply for having scant hair or wearing mom jeans, but I can’t. We see buildings toppling backwards into fire, broken leg bones refusing to heal, shadows crawling out of the ground. Our memories whisper and pulsate. There aren’t even parking spaces big enough for them.

with uke

Howie Good is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Cover Art: Hans Eiskonen

two poems – lauren napier

December 31, 2019December 19, 2019 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Matt Clifford - Photo Credit Matt Diss ALOC Media

A Definition of the End

When the devil drives
The heart takes a backseat
Down a path tread by broken stares
false hopes
empty deeds

Blades of grass damp and clinging to the ground below
Damp with tears meant to quench the gasps of burning bridges
And clammy hands no longer afraid
But awaiting
To grasp the end
A definitional moment
An end to the anger
Of the peripheral glare of the reaper’s shadow
A tongue finally forbidden to slander

When the devil drives
The heart must relinquish the keys in the ignition
For
Needs must

Who I Found Virginia City, Nevada

What are you thinking about when your fingers twitch in sleep?
Thoughts that are voiced with that one whiskey over the tipping point
The phone was dialed
And answered in a ghost town graveyard
Desert wind and your voice
A yearning heart’s medicine

The coyote greeted me at the gate
The scent of sage in flared nostrils
An urge to follow him over the hills and into the brush
Dissolving into his dusty camouflage
Until a
Murmur through the phone line
Asks “where will we find our peace?”

Wherever are you whenever your bones are in the bed next to mine?
I find myself lost between the whispers and the dreams
Down paths that do not disappear within the day
And those that I will follow into the night

When did these footsteps appear just beyond the fence?
When my gaze was distracted by the moon rising above the cliff
I heard a deep and and heavy sigh
And decided whenever
Wherever
And there
I would follow the moonlight wisdom in the shadow’s hair

lauren.napier finds solace in melody and the written word. She has penned a children’s book, All My Animals, stories for NPR Berlin, amongst other texts and songs. lauren is often traveling with her feline, notebooks, and acoustic guitar, exploring her surroundings and sharing stories. WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | TWITTER

Cover Art: Davide Ragusa

Author Photo: Barbara Rodriguez

her tongue – paul ilechko

December 30, 2019December 18, 2019 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Matt Clifford - Photo Credit Matt Diss ALOC Media

She pushes her tongue
into the hole of his castration
his vacancy the hollow
and her saliva mixing
with the memory of loss

a hawk shimmies into
the place within the sky
where the sun used to rise
before the blackness
became merely emptiness

along the border she finds
men nailed upon crosses …
suspended as a temporary
measure until their paperwork
might be verified

a desert is a field
that has lost a lottery
for which it never even
purchased a ticket and really
how cruel must that be?

she dreams of children …
and children might once have been
possible might even have been
welcome but not now
not here in this field of bones

he remembers being a man
in the time before they stripped
the tendons from within his
flesh and tied him to a post
beneath a dying sun

she thrusts her tongue
into the desert of his throat …
squeezing out moisture
that might just keep him alive
for one more day.

Paul Ilechko is the author of the chapbooks “Bartok in Winter” (Flutter Press, 2018) and “Graph of Life” (Finishing Line Press, 2018). His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Manhattanville Review, West Trade Review, Yes Poetry, Otoliths and Indicia. He lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. INSTAGRAM| FACEBOOK

Cover Photo: Jared Verdi