How the Sunflower Practices a Distancing – Maria S. Picone

June 17, 2020June 12, 2020 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Fortifying her core, she sips a poverty of water,
muting the fresh-corn brilliance of her body
with white curtains. She awaits a joy bobbin
to hover at her concentric breast. She knows
a scarred Saturday implies renewal.
Instincts tell her: wait, respire, listen.
Turning her face skyward, she takes
her mother’s gifts: rain, the hum of bees.

Picone Headshot

Maria S. Picone has an MFA from Goddard College. She’s interested in cultural issues, identity, and memory. As a Korean adoptee in an Italian American family and a New Englander, her obsessions with noodles, seafood, and the ocean are hardly her fault. Her poetry appears in Homestead Review, Ariel Chart, Headline Poetry, Mineral Lit Mag, and Route 7 Review. Her Twitter is @mspicone, and her website is mariaspicone.com.

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This poem is from our first print collection
of poetry, “Thought For Food”, an anthology
benefiting Denver Food Rescue. To support
our fundraiser, please visit this link.

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Things you don’t say at the dinner table, which in my case growing up was anything. – Bruce Sterling

June 8, 2020June 12, 2020 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

I avoided speaking for fear of communication
or maybe humiliation.
I didn’t know how to talk
or specifically
to speak their language without reprisal.

Slipping up in our household was tantamount to losing
and losing was bad
and bad is how I felt
for much of my life.
See shame runs deep
in my family
which
coincidentally is quite a shame.

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Who is this Bruce Sterling character? Some call him philosopher, some call him dad. Nobody calls him a poet but that doesn’t stop him from crafting lines into something just about good enough to read. Without any formal training he seems to hold his own at the beloved Writer’s Block’s weekly writing events. He’s known to say, “Spending time with the poetry community is the only sane thing to do in this world. It fosters creativity, acceptance and huge amounts of love and frankly not much else matters.” Bruce is published in Spit Poet and Writer’s Block zines.

This poem is from our first print collection
of poetry, “Thought For Food”, an anthology
benefiting Denver Food Rescue. To support
our fundraiser, please visit this link.

Thought For Food Promotional 1

The Alley Poets – Chelsea Cook

June 5, 2020June 4, 2020 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Let me show you

Where the poets live.

They gather in an alley, at midnight, under the full moon,

To read dirty haiku and make a ruckus in the streets.

Rebels!

But they are caring rebels.

Tonight, I found the alley poets

And took a dose of love.

How are you feeling? they ask.

Good, I say.

(Good is always the right answer, the work answer.)

No, tell us how you really feel.

Depressed.

That’s better, because it’s honest. Now come here:

“Every day, we’ll show you a moment so golden you must close your eyes to see it.”

I must stick around for that day.

Why is death such a theme in poetry?

Why does the depressed mind latch onto it,

Instead of the beauty in the words, the rhymes, the repetition?

Why is it so easy for pain to enter,

For negative feelings to take root like weeds,

For the analytical mind to try and rationalize the irrational?

The alley poets tell me a ghost story:

About the monster “that which follows”!

Stalking the cities, the towns, the towers

For those souls whose hearts have turned to stone.

It is insatiable, all-consuming, leaving destruction in its wake.

But they also tell me:

“That which follows” hates fire, warmth, light, love.

So, the alley poets light a campfire.

We sing and dance and read,

Keeping the darkness at bay.

Not to sound cliché

But the poems they recite,

Are the stars between the clouds at night.

They hug me tightly as I take my leave,

Encouraging: I must carry the ember until the next time

The community comes together.

The upbeat music starts to play,

Because…”that which follows” has no chance

Against the alley poets!

Chelsea Cook grew up on the coast of Virginia, but now calls the mountains of Colorado home. She has been writing poetry since high school, and has been active in the Boulder open mic scene. She is currently finishing the draft of her first novel.

This poem is from our first print collection of poetry, “Thought For Food”, an anthology benefiting Denver Food Rescue. To support our fundraiser, please visit this link.

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The Return – Melissa Ferrer

May 29, 2020June 4, 2020 ~ South Broadway Press ~ 1 Comment

The first nine months Of our life Was spent In quarantine Nurtured by the wisdom Of our mother’s mothers Nutrified by the Earth Suckling As one being in body Organic In nature. Symbiotic Symbol of continuation. Why Have we not returned Awareness to the womb In these times Seek the divine dark From which the spark of life Was bourne? Why Have we not sought The wisdom of those who came Before separation Before degradation And desecration of mind And spirit? Why Have we not embraced The girth of the earth Beneath our feet? Learn of what this bigness Be. Hear what the bees Buzz; news Of the Ancient Ascent And the absence Of each. Noise. Uttered in tongue And misidentified meaning Ideological demons Occupying the homes Turned house– The bodies Turned louse– Parasitic Prophet of death And termination Living in the fauna Of our mouths. Hands balled into fists Tightness taught us To savor our anger As a way to resist The falling dominoes And kingdoms Devoid of glory and fortified, sanctified Foundation Tumbling– remains Creating another story– Debris, and crumbs Of those numbed Translated as the way To salvation. And thus, the birth of this new nation. Always and always More and more Preaching the gospel of lonely And fragmentation Disintegration of awareness Assimilation of fear Abandonment of what is In search of what was never there— Perfection in the flesh Salvation in what we can hold What we can mold From our dastardly desires— …………..A kingdom foretold …………..Whose fall approaches. In the wombs of our rooms Let us croon ourselves into Gestation Into carry Into hold Let us sing, sing, sing Lullabies of light light light And drift, drift, drift into the silence of the Darkness That brought us to be Behind every word that we speak Let us abandon every pit- ……………………………………………ting against Form us into I Into one Into yo soy Io sono Je suis Daughter and Son Husband and Wife Mother and Father Sister and Brother man/woman Divinity made flesh Masculine-Feminine Oneness in our chest And from this cavity …………………………………..—this hollow— That breathes Blood and remembrance Let us grow our seeds.

Melissa Ferrer is a renegade with hippie tendencies. Through poetry she seeks to provide a sense of solidarity to all people, encourage people to act unto peace and love, and foster community among both the like and unlike minded. Recently, she’s been yearning to set down her ego and replace it with a jubilation of the spirit. She wants you to join in, in whatever capacity you can.

This poem is from our first print collection of poetry, “Thought For Food”, an anthology benefiting Denver Food Rescue. To support our fundraiser, please visit this link.

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Ars Poetica: Access // Cortney Collins

May 27, 2020November 6, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ 1 Comment

Ars Poetica: Access

BY CORTNEY COLLINS

An award-winning photojournalist once told me

anyone can learn to take a good photo.

It’s not technique.

It’s access.

Access:

to a riot breaking out on an angry street.

to a woman who has just lost her finger
climbing over a chain-link fence
crossing the border into Texas.

to the dusty rubble,
and everything beneath,
moments after a bomb
has incinerated a home.

to a sun-washed bedroom
where a seven year old child
has just died of cancer
in his mother & father’s arms.

Poetry is not just metaphor and meter,
allegory and alliteration.

Poetry is access:

to the secret hobbies of protozoans.

to the color of chlorophyll.

to the lover you secretly yearn for
but know will destroy you.

to enough magic to bring
your cat back from a velvet
bag of ashes embroidered
with his name.

A poem can only be

what it can access.

Cortney Collins is a poet living in Longmont, CO. A four-time winner of Fort Collins’ First Friday Poetry Slam at The Bean Cycle, her work has been published by South Broadway Ghost Society, Amethyst Review, Devil’s Party Press, Back Patio Press, 24hr Neon Mag, The Naropa Vagina Monologues Zine, and is forthcoming in Tiny Spoon Lit Mag. During these strange and surreal times, she hosts a weekly poetry virtual open mic, Zoem. She shares a home with her beloved cat, Pablo, and tries to eat just the right amount of kale.

This poem is from our first print collection
of poetry, “Thought For Food”, an anthology
benefiting Denver Food Rescue. To support
our fundraiser, please visit this link.

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Pomegranate Blues // Brett Randell

May 18, 2020November 6, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ 1 Comment

Pomegranate Blues

BY BRETT RANDELL

grape grape
apple apple
pomegranate blues
smokin’ in the alleyway
moonlit dancin’ shoes

mint mint
lemon lemon
garlic ginger waltz
old man in the dining hall
says it’s not his fault

citrus citrus
honey honey
echinacea poem
cursed if you go out to play
blessed if you stay home

lime lime
dandelion
stingin’ nettle song
bright eyed baby lookin’ up
wonderin’ what went wrong

Brett Randell is a writer and musician who loves to play in regular venues, on rooftops, at yoga festivals, in bars, living rooms, and beyond. He is currently working on a novel while part of The Book Project at The Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop. Brett’s writing has appeared in Stain’d Magazine, Interkors, and The Blue Lake Review.

This poem is from our first print collection
of poetry, “Thought For Food”, an anthology
benefiting Denver Food Rescue. To support
our fundraiser, please visit this link.