She is the peddler at the end of our dreams, With a beautiful surface.
The dance of the morning, where gentle sight abides.
The feast of clear color with smiling song and form.
The sight that sees beyond the sea And the coming home of the fishes.
The song of the kindly living, And the coming home of the lovely breeze.
Steve Anc is the son of Ajuzie Nwaorisa, a Nigerian poet. He is a poet with searching knowledge and deep meditation on universal themes, he is quite a modern poet in his adherence to language and his use of metaphor is soul-searching. Anc’s works have been published in Open-door Poetry Magazine, Poetrysoup, Goodlitcompany, Voice From The Void, Our Poetry Archive, I Become The Beast, Fire Magazine
are silent films slapstick and melodramas
projected onto old white sheets hung
inside her skull If she wants a sound track
she has to create it herself
Memories blur and emulsion molds
even on precious 35mm Kodachrome slides
evidence of her family her childhood
her dogs Lassie and Bambi
She squirrels letters photographs clippings
opera programs museum tickets trip itineraries
in 8 x11x 4 inch boxes on shelves in her study
She can’t remember what’s in the boxes
Who cares what’s in the boxes –
a memento is not the memory
Memory requires mind electrical waves sweeping
over the cortex sweeping cobwebs from corners
swapping one year with another one face with another
flux of memory trails through forests of fact and fiction
Memories do not stay stacked neatly in boxes
but dribble foam seep sublime onto the rug
into corners over window sills flow down
the clapboards on the side of the house
They trip her up when she goes outside to water
the garden Tigers of grief pounce when her back
is turned Sudden tears on the anniversary of her
mother’s death even though it was more than fifty years ago
To look back is to flirt with becoming
a pillar of salt but says Letitia
with a shrug it adds needed flavor
to whatever I’m stewing in today
Sylvia Byrne Pollack, a hard-of-hearing poet and former scientist, has published in Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review,The Stillwater Review and many others. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she won the 2013 Mason’s Road Literary Award, was a 2019 Jack Straw Writer and a 2021 Mineral School Resident. Her debut full-length collection Risking Itwas published by Red Mountain Press (2021.) Visit her at www.sylviabyrnepollack.com
One day our bodies
won’t work this way—
won’t fit together
coaster on tracks,
wild
ride rise fall plummet
into
oblivion.
exhilarate
tummy turned
knotted nausea
panting
fingers clenching,
holding onto,
pushing into,
leaning back to
There might be
bedpans.
diapers.
A neat row of teeth
soaking in solution.
Bones so arthritic
they can’t bend
towards each other.
or unbend,
and still
I will reach
for you.
Talya Jankovits’ work has appeared in a number of literary journals. Her short story “Undone” in Lunch Ticket was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her poem, My Father Is A Psychologist in BigCityLit, was nominated for both a Pushcart prize and The Best of the Net. Her micro piece, “Bus Stop in Morning” is a winner of one of Beyond Words Magazine’s, 250-word challenges. Her Poem, “Guf” was the recipient of the Editor’s Choice Award in Arkana Magazine and nominated for the Best of Net. Her poem, A Woman of Valor, was featured in the 2019/2020 Eshet Hayil exhibit at Hebrew Union College Los Angeles. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and resides in Chicago with her husband and four daughters. To read more of her work you can visit www.talyajankovits.com, or follow her on twitter or Instagram @talyajankovits
a broken- window wind and these flutters of unsettled evenings, pushing elbows through shelves in a second- hand bookshop.
pages flutter wildly, falling wide open – flags flying to signal all nations.
DS Maolalai (he/him) has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and by another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His poetry has received eleven nominations for Best of the Net and eight for the Pushcart Prize, and has been released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)
Josh Gaydos (he/him/his) is a self-taught poet that currently resides in Colorado. He has been published in Barren Magazine, Door Is A Jar Magazine, The Lettered Olive and The City Quill. For 2023, he is releasing a poem a week on his free substack at https://joshgaydos.substack.com/InstagramTwitter
Someday, somewhere – anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.
Pablo Neruda
What does this quote mean to you?
Trite but true with some flowers is this Neruda quote to me. It’s stuck around since I read it and though I am finding that finding of self a great deal less static than this quote implies, it keeps me aware that I could wake up in a decade’s time and find what I’d been running for or running from had made me into something I despised. Sorry for rhyming so much.
What books have made an important impact on you and why?
Too many so I’ll pull the first five that come to mind. East of Eden by John Steinbeck, captures human nature and our interconnectedness, the fact he addressed it to his young sons and was saying “here it is, everything” and delivers. frank: sonnets by Diane Suess, for the “isness”, not answering the Sirens call on a happy feeling or ending, the ability to paint a landscape as big as a coast and also write a poem about the grout around a brick (I’m being figurative here). What Work Is by Phillip Levine, for laying out that blue-collar / American working condition with romanticism and disdain, to put himself in it, distance himself from it, and paint individuals like they were in the room with you. Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems, the ‘other poems’ in that just drop you somewhere and you’re immersed, it could be India and you feel the dense downpour with a herd of water buffalo walking by or New Orleans, or Compton. Robin puts you there in a way I haven’t been transported before or since. Another big one for me is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. My mom had given me that when I really went headfirst into this writing thing. That book helped me to make a point to find art and make space for art wherever I was. Watch a movie, read a book, spin some vinyl and pull feeling or a scene from everything.
What is the value of writing and art in the current state of the world?
Sanity. Gelling and coming to terms with the cracks.
How has writing and art helped to form the person you are today?
I wouldn’t be here without it, and I don’t just mean serving a guest editing stint for this press. I’d be dead, or fishing with my hands and a line in the Gulf, or possibly I’d be a merchant marine. Most likely dead though.
Barefoot and listening to Fiona Apple, feeling as eternal at 33 as I did at 9 years old, at 12, just as likely for every emotion I have ever had to destroy me or vitalize me, just like every feeling is a Grand Canyon, barefoot on the gravel that is every stripe of red that music has ever made me relive, invincible and vulnerable at the edge of realizing that a chasm is beautiful because of what it exposes.
Mickey Thompson (she/they) is a poet, biologist, and teacher who grew up in Arizona and has now found her heart home in Northern Colorado. Their work has appeared in “Multiverse: An Anthology of Superhero Poetry of Superhuman Proportions” from Write Bloody Publishing, and one self-published chapbook that was stapled together on the arm of a couch in Tucson.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. I feel my fate by what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. -Theodore Roethke
Sleep is like food for my father. It is simply fuel for old Mexican Men. Always stirring in the early am hours –for prayer, for stamps, or for chess. No beauty in closed eyes. My sleep now is as food for my father has been.
Ironic now, how my father and The Middle East have made amends. The 2am World Cup Futbol games that the continent of Qatar sends. Sleep is like food for my father. It is simply fuel for old Mexican Men.
The last few months in Los Angeles, I worked the graveyard shift 10pm to 10am. Six months later I put in my two weeks and moved home at my parents request. No beauty in closed eyes. My sleep now is as food for my father has been.
Now home drinking coffee and wine. I call it Roethke’s Wake to Sleep Blend 2am I walk to the bathroom, occupied by him. Later the kitchen again in his possess. Sleep is like food for my father. It is simply fuel for old Mexican Men.
As ghosts we haunt these halls each night, of my old home to no end. Conversing with our demons and angels , some damned and some blessed. No beauty in closed eyes. My sleep now is as food for my father has been.
Old blood never sleeps well– doesn’t now, didn’t then. Much unforgiven in our chests, walking hearts without rest. Sleep is like food for my father. It is simply fuel for old Mexican Men. No beauty in closed eyes. My sleep now is as food for my father has been.
Cid Galicia is a Mexican American poet who taught in New Orleans for over the past decade. He is in the final year of his MFA, through The University of Nebraska Omaha. He is a poetry editor for The Good Life Review, a reader for The Kitchen Table Quarterly, and this year’s FIRECRACKER Poetry Manuscript Awards. He was the recipient of the Richard Duggin Fellowship—granted for demonstrated excellence in writing, runner-up for the Academy of American Poets Helen W. Kenefick Poetry Prize, and most recently nominated for the Helen Hansen Outstanding Graduate Student Award. He is currently living in Los Angeles as an Intern to The Editor for The Red Hen Press. His work has appeared in The Watershed Review, the National Poetry Month Issue of The Elevation Review, Trestle Ties Issue 5, and the upcoming spring issue of Trampoline.
I finally stood, happy at disrobement Brought about by some principalities Some fundamental truths not escaped Alone, free, tied to each being Nakedness in the forming. I tried to put a stop to it Afraid once, though only once Allowing layer upon layer to melt Slither away into better forms – Serve better suited seekers And quickly I latched on to the fact of my emblazoned bare Such a funny patch; so many distinct markings – though all in all a large converging pink Naked, as naked as one may be.
Abhishek Todmal is a writer based in Pune, India. He is currently working on his first novel – a piece of comedic fiction. His poetry has most recently been featured in an issue of DASH Literary Journal. Amongst other things, he enjoys keeping active and loitering aimlessly under the sun.
A poem which may be mistaken for the thank you letter I read out loud to the funders of the prestigious fellowship I won last summer, a fellowship which did absolutely fuck all to save my Autistic Black Muslim Body from being interrogated by those CBP/TSA terrorists at the airport
It strikes me as odd that this school, this fellowship, has no protocols in place for students that are forcibly interrogated at the border. I guess I shouldn’t expect much from an institution, and I guess I should bite my tongue and do the polite thing, talk about how amazing my trip was. But my trip was not amazing. It was fraught, painful, nerve-wracking. I was sick from the moment I got there to the moment I left. I walked into all types of bureaucratic walls—people not believing I was actually there to do research, and so forth. Worst of all, when I needed medical help, I had to pay out of pocket because the insurance was a formality. Oh sure, they reimbursed me for the expenses, but only partially. The idea of a medical evacuation was dangled before me, but I quickly lost hope in that. I was sick to my stomach the day I boarded my return flight, cutting my trip a full month short. Besides pain, all I had on my mind was TSA/CBP. Would they harass me? Where is home for someone like me? I am an Autistic Somali Man traveling from Kenya—that’s a perfect terrorist profile I fit. 20 Some hours later, I arrived in the states. They ask me pedantic questions about my research and MN Nice me with “good for you.” They do all this as they shuffle me into a tertiary screening line, confronted by lazy feds with mustard stains on their plaid shirts. I know what questions they want to ask me, because I’ve seen this movie before. But I refuse to answer their questions. I watch the older Somali man – the only other person asked to go to this special line before we can leave the airport – duck his head and smile and comply with their hellacious line of questioning. I stand my ground like a Zimmerman defense. But I am also weak. I can barely stand. They threaten to go through my luggage down to the underwear. To confiscate my devices and see who I’ve been talking to. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, they tell me. I can feel my heartbeat racing every time I recall this memory. There are no words to describe how livid I was when I finally got home—after answering their stupid questions, knowing I had no choice, feeling like a failure for acquiescing. I emailed my contacts at the university, both in my department and at the fellowship. There were a bunch of emails back and forth, a lot of concern and apologizing, but I knew nothing would come of it. I knew I would not see justice, just as I knew I was labeled a terrorist from a piece of shit country the moment I was born. I reached out to CAIR, the ACLU, filed formal complaints with CBP. Nothing nothing nothing came of any of it. All of this reinforced the idea that my life is worthless. Absolutely meaningless. And that is why I do the work I do, write the way I do, and live the way I do. I have no choice. I wish I could say I’ll be applying for this fellowship again. I have no reason to. And if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t have applied in the first place. Thanks for your time.
*Author’s Note: All of this really happened, from the events in the poem, to my reading this to the people who partially funded my trip. I was supposed to be more grateful, I guess? Funny, I’ve never felt good about thanking white people for anything, least of all a few measly dollars. Sometimes poems are all we have to cuss people out with. And if they wanna cuss back, well, I guess they’ll have to learn how to write poetry first. That’s a joke. Laugh./
Said Shaiye is an Autistic Somali Writer & Photographer. His debut book, Are You Borg Now? was a 2022 Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir. He has contributed essays to the anthologies Muslim American Writers at Home, The Texas Review’s All-Poetry Issue, and We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World. He has published poetry & prose in Obsidian, Brittle Paper,Pithead Chapel, 580 Split, Entropy, Diagram, Rigorous, Night Heron Barks, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota, where he was a Graduate Instructor of Creative Writing, as well as a Judd International Research Fellow. He teaches writing to Autistic kids through Unrestricted Interest, as well as in the English Departments of several colleges in the Twin Cities.
This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, Dwell: Poems About Home.Purchase here.
lately done, lately love ‘neath garlands neatly trimmed nearly featureless, without tethers or hands fastening to a pledge of allegiance they cannot keep, to a creator who spun the trees like screws before the sign off scene, like polished high heel shoes
lately done, lately love with timid approach to cuckoo clocks dipping beaks in sanded hours, our end left with a note that will oil from skin with us, vinyl and wood, needle and mud could forget the impression made without the guesswork of carbon dating
lately done, lately love no fruit will fall from the mail ordered apartment gardens, boxed up dirt and seed seen indirectly like one another, decomposition composed alone to conjoin and disintegrate, barren, bearing
Josh Gaydos (he/him/his) is a self-taught poet that currently resides in Colorado. He has been published in Barren Magazine, Door Is A Jar Magazine, The Lettered Olive and The City Quill. IG: @jgwrites22
south broadway press 