We are incredibly excited to announce South Broadway Press‘ 2026 Pushcart Prize nominations! Please join us in celebrating these wonderful poets.
The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America – including Highest Honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Since 1976, hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in our annual collections. Each year most of the writers and many of the presses are new to the series. Every volume contains an index of past selections, plus lists of outstanding presses with addresses.
The Pushcart Prize has been a labor of love and independent spirits since its founding. It is one of the last surviving literary co-ops from the 60’s and 70’s.
Pushcart Prize Nominees
FROM SOUTH BROADWAY PRESS’ SUMMER & AUTUMN 2025 EDITIONS
or down the country, or around the country. The country, an exercise in understanding the space
of the country. I do not care if you are my friend or my best friend or a collection of memories
I can talk to about the memories you are. I do not care about meaning or anger
or hope or apocalypse when I care about laughter. I do not care if it makes sense to call you
too many times in a day until you pick up to tell you a joke you will like and laugh and laugh.
What I care about is distance as a measure of effort to overcome said distance. If the distance
between us is the country, then the effort is the world. You are a world away. I am
a world away. When I stare into the middle of nowhere, you are there laughing at the joke
I traveled around the world to tell you.
THE BAD NEWS
BY WHEELER LIGHT
You wake up knowing nothing.
The day, the shape of a chrysanthemum
bell. Unraveling is the start
of eventually hoping. Oh, I too mistake
disaster for salvation.
I take my medication the same as anyone else,
staring at myself in the bathroom mirror
to see what I recognize. My actions reflected—
the bad news is the actions.
The good news is the reflecting.
Mistaking the self for its consequences.
Mistaking the self for anything at all.
The bad news is the self.
The good news is waiting at the end
of the illuminating hallway of you.
SAWMILL RUN
BY WHEELER LIGHT
Writing about a mountain because there is a mountain.
Photographs of the mountain capture more than words
can carve out of enjambment’s live edge. Oranges and reds
at the end of fall litter my eyes with the image
I try to translate into imagery. Can’t you see the green
peeking between naked birch trees? The sun reflecting off
the fog blanketing everything? A photograph is a headstone
which mourns the moment it was taken. Up the road,
there is another overlook and another. Different angles
to view the jagged document of time, these peaks erupting
and softening over enough millennia, their existence nearly makes you forget
dry brush, pipelines, controlled burns, doe crossing the road doesn’t
make it. The present, a cloud of smoke invisible behind the cliff in the distance.
Writing about the earth because there is the earth
cracking its knuckles and arching its back.
At the overlook, I get out of the car and step on a pile of broken glass.
Wheeler Light received his MFA in creative writing from University of Virginia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, Barely South, and Allium, among other publications. You can find his poems at www.wheelerlight.net.
EDITOR’S NOTE: THESE POEMS ARE BEST READ ON TEXT OR HORIZONTALLY ON A MOBILE DEVICE.
LAGNIAPPE
BY KD HACK
I could’ve held you / the whole night / through / the wilderness / of my body-mind / asks / too many questions / but I am parched / & prefer / too many answers / meet me / at every river bank / along the Mississippi / your name / a prayer / my name / a promise / your kiss / a wish / it’s good medicine / it’s my command / teach me / something sweet / something mother-father-auntie-grandma / tongue / I want / the knowledge / to blacken on / my tongue / I want / the taste / to linger / the lagniappe / of a love / freshwater / & somehow / still molten / I molted / here / on these rocks / slippery / but not too heavy / to hold / I will bring them / back / to you / like precious stones / like something / we might build with / the levees won’t break / there / the gumbo will be / glorious / & the bowls / never empty / bring your spoons / bring your lover’s lover / bring your appetite / bottomless / as the river / where we sent up Hail Marys / like shooting stars / fletting but full / of feeling / a feast / we won’t soon forget.
DIOSCOREA POLYSTACHYA
BY KD HACK
Fairy as in frolick as in lick my faggity ass while you’re at it we’re all wild here & freer than they want us to think when the water grew too frigid to dip a toe into my friend fluorescent in the finger-smudged mirror made a man out of mascara & might & I might not be convincing anyone but myself but you can kiss my faggity ass & even my lips while you’re at it I promise I won’t bite unless you ask nightly I wish for whiskers I whisper in their ear let me come nearer let me come closer to the fairy prince I promised to be in the woods where we dug our faggity fingers in the soil in the seams making streams across our bodies I’d dig a grave in the space between your breasts & your belly my legs melt into jelly when you lick me hard enough this is not a metaphor this is not a death wish this is a grave I’m digging down where the fairy potatoes grow I am not asking you to die but to be reborn beneath the soil I’ll meet you down there soon.
KD Hack is a Queer/Trans writer, Death Doula & land steward. Their artistic practices were nourished across the Northwoods of Wisconsin, & reside in the spaces between fingers in the soil & pencils on the page. His work is featured in Peach Fuzz, Fruitslice, Querencia Press, Transfix, Tence, & Volume One, among others.
In college, I sat in a room, painfully lit by the overhead fluorescents, at an uncomfortable desk meant for someone much shorter than me, listening to my Anthropology professor, as he asked a room full of half-awake students, what the first evidence of civilization was. It was a test, which most people failed. One intrepid student answered Egypt, another offered the presence of agriculture, others stared blankly–waiting for an answer. It was a broken bone, he said. Thousands of years ago, a human broke their femur– that long bone connecting hip to knee. Had they been an animal, they would have been left, weakened and alone, And as the day shortened into the terrors of a wild night, other animals would have crept in, no doubt, circled around them, picking them off as the weakest in the herd. But this human was cared for. Their bone was mended. This was the pivotal sign that other humans had wanted to care for them, had perhaps thought of them as family, had perhaps loved them. Today, as I scroll on my phone, I see video after video of people begging to be seen as human, of children whose limbs were blown off, of people with no homes holding up signs that say, “hungry,” and I wonder if we can still call ourselves a civilization? Somewhere along the line, perhaps when we traded oral tradition for computer screens, and living off what the earth so readily wants to give to us, for speedy factory convenience, we forgot about the human with the broken femur. we forgot that deep down in our lineage, we share the same tree roots. now, I see signs in my city as people march down the street, saying “Jesus was a refugee,” and I wonder if the people yelling at the ones protesting to protect our siblings, would they even recognize the face of their god, if he were holding up a sign in that same crowd, demanding the deportations stop. When did we lose our humanity? What will it take for us to see the value in mending bones again–not for profit, but because it’s what the spirit needs?
Hillary Gonzalez (she/they) is a Baltimore based queer, disabled, and AuDHD poet, whose work explores themes of eco-consciousness and reconnecting with the land, identity, and healing. They are the authors of Seasonsand Wild Unfelt World, a collection of eco-poetry coming in 2026 from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. Their poems have been published by South Broadway Press, and in anthologies by Bi+ Book Gang, Yellow Arrow Publishing, Loblolly Press’ zine: Understory, a fundraising anthology for the victims of Hurricane Helene, and In Praise of Despair, an anthology for disabled artists by Beyond the Veil Press.
(Dad is wiping frantically at the windshield condensation catching up we are blind to the road ahead)
My therapist is wearing teal glasses today When did this begin for you? she lifts the wire frames gently off the cushion of her cheek pushing them closer to sight was there a time before, I wonder have I always been meticulously watching contemplating movement sirens from school chairs calculating distance traveling closer or further like counting seconds between lightning and thunder one one thousand two one thousand three one thousand anticipating arrival creak of a wooden floor boots land heavy do they shuffle or drag are they staggered or constant is he coming or going slamming of a screen door angry or rushed in or out her or him idling in front of a fridge hunger or thirst boredom or pleasure is it the beginning or the end I tell her I can’t remember a time before
Azalea Aguilar is a Chicana poet from South Texas, gulf scents and childhood memories linger in her work. Her poetry delves into complexities of motherhood, echoes of trauma, and resilience found in spaces shaped by survival. Her work has appeared in Angel City Review, The Skinny Poetry Journal, and The Acentos Review.
Even the lions sprout wings in a dream this desperate, the one you begged for, early bedtimes & lucid machinations. Here, you finally have it — if only in a watery fog already dissipating. For now it is yours: harmony true as a caduceus, clarity regular as day. The dream’s central art: your riven heart, the other half given away.
every year the air turns cold & trees catch fire—orange embers glow backlit by pale autumn sun it is time to migrate
saltwater salmon go home to the rivers of their youth travel in leaps of scales that shimmer in afternoon light the vice-grip of evolution commands them to procreate its primal hands tight around slippery throats most of them will not survive the journey is high-risk uphill battle they swim upstream in the rush of current many are lost there is no time to mourn
when they hit freshwater salmon deny the need to eat their bodies nothing but empty vessels meant to sire new offspring in sacred genesis those who make it to the gravel beds where they were born lay their eggs & wait for death—
pulled back by invisible thread salmon give up the free expanse of ocean where the world is boundless for a wet grave— they renounce the promise of future & return to birthplace where they die martyrs for their species with no one left to grieve them
Dara Goodale (they/she) is a Romanian-American lesbian, poet, and university student living in Lausanne, Switzerland. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Poetry Journal, Cleaver Magazine, Thimble Literary Magazine, Underbelly Press, The Passionfruit Review, and more.
Hiding in the single stall men's room, I try to reach out for help. But there is no service in this backwoods temple, and the wifi is password protected.
With a sigh I leave the safety of the small room and locked door to wade into the sea of blood relatives pouring into the pews, and slide into my saved seat.
Standing at the podium, the Elder gestures to the body of my dead grandfather; starting the eulogy by praising the Church. - In two years my grandmother will also be eulogized by this same Elder, who is her brother by mother and by faith.
Just as bereft as the rest of the congregation, he will use her death to accuse the left for the downfall of our nation.
I won't attend in person but my mother will send me the recording and I will see the world is ending and I am the one to blame. - Here and now, the Elder invites others to share, admitting my grandfather had his flaws and reminding us, it isn’t the time to speak ill of the dead.
A long silence before a Brother stands and speaks on how active he was in the church, these last months and weeks. Nods of agreement flood the foyer.
At the social after the ceremony, I trace footsteps of my past life; as people who refuse to know me give conditional condolences to the person that I used to be.
CRAB APPLES
BY MAPLE SCORESBY
Unsupervised grandchildren gather around a row of crab apple trees, picking the bitter browning fruit off the ground around the tree’s roots; too young and small to grab the pristine bright green apples, hanging high in the branches of the tree.
The kids don’t mind though. They know that if they root around enough in the mush decomposing by their feet, eventually they will find a crisp bite of emerald, sour enough to make their faces crinkle up just as good as any high hanging fruit.
Maple Scoresby (she/her) is a Denver poet who tends to deposit her paychecks into the local claw machines instead of the bank. Her poetry tackles topics like gender identity, double standards, and pizza sauce. In her spare time, Maple likes to cry about how terrible she is at Street Fighter while drinking an obscene amount of eggnog.
tighter than his own hands, a familial hive claws his throat
prepped by tender olive juice varnishes
the wood vinegar against august trauma now prepared for pickling
our railing indents the melancholy splinters rise once again and plead
to trace his face connect the dots of our generational trauma
born of the Mediterranean feral freckles cut like diamonds
seeped in displacement and addiction
deep strawberry hair, darker in sea’s salt feet like talons gripping sand
Leor Feldman (they/he) is a Jewish disabled writer who explores themes of culture, placemaking and the connection between our natural world and the chronically ill, genderqueer body. You can find their work in Humble Pie Lit Journal, South Broadway Press, Hey Alma and The Colorado Sun. Leor currently resides in Conifer, Colorado, yet is often found at community events in Denver.
The liquor in an oyster is the brine of the water-body held at harvest. This river drains the Blue Ridge, meets the Chesapeake with a sigh, leaves a sweetness in the locals, but on the new planks of Wellfleet Harbor, I tasted your salt. Beloved, that one word in the day’s chalk floods the room with light. Could I ever choose another having known your waiting nacre, your shucked, gleam-soft interior along my tongue?
Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions) and the poetry chapbooks Before: After; In a Period of Absence, a Lake; whisper song; and The Salt of the Geologic World. Find more of her work at linktr.ee/jenniferabrowne.
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