August A Place | Lori Brack

Image: Nick Kaufman

August A Place

The front was sand and yellow wheat and brown horseflesh and night whistle of a train. The back was a gate unlatched onto summer – flower patches and sprinklers, blue television windows floating in the dark. Before builders poured foundations down the block, I ran there between rows of corn. Sunsets blazed or whispered and disappeared past railroad tracks at the horizon, the distance I could figure going under my own steam, the faraway I imagined growing up to find.

Lori Brack is the author of A Case for the Dead Letter Detective (Kelsay, 2021), Museum Made of Breath (Spartan Kansas City, 2018) and A Fine Place to See the Sky (The Field School, 2010). She lives on the prairie two blocks from the Garden of Eden and 14 miles from the geodetic center of North America.

This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, 
Dwell: Poems About Home. Purchase here.

House of Blues | Susan Carman

Image: Drew Beamer

House of Blues

She eyes the tired roadhouse
tucked between junk yards filled
with car doors and still-good hubcaps,

hickory smoke heavy on night air,
rubbing against her like a cat.
Inside, past shadowy booths

grimy with time, guitars draw her in
with a walkin’ blues line,
shuffle through 12 bars like they mean it.

Ya feelin’ blue? the drummer growls,
and the crowd spills onto the dance floor
where she joins women with tight jeans

and tight smiles, moving alone, faces painted
hopeful. When the tune slows,
she takes the hand of a sad-eyed guy—

they slide and sway, his breath
on her neck a sweet refrain
in a song of love gone wrong.

Susan Carman is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and served as poetry editor for Kansas City Voices. Her poetry appeared most recently in I-70 Review, Heartland! Poetry of Love, Resistance &  Solidarity, and the anthologies Curating Home and The Shining Years. Retired from non-profit management, she lives in Overland Park, Kansas, where she is an ESL volunteer.

This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, 
Dwell: Poems About Home. Purchase here.

Your Current GPS Location | Jason Ryberg

Image: Jeremy Bishop

Your Current GPS Location

She tried to tell me that the past
could be simply abandoned like
unclaimed baggage at the airport
or bus station,

or even, one day, with the closing
of a door and the turning of a key—

left behind forever in the rear-view mirror
like a house full of someone else’s belongings
(not yours, not anymore) in a town full of strangers
who never did you any favors.

But, I say the past can slip
a microchip on you
when you’re not looking;

I say the past always knows
your current GPS location.

Jason Ryberg is the author of fourteen books of poetry,
six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders,
notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be
(loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry
letters to various magazine and newspaper editors.
He is currently an artist-in-residence at both
The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s
and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor
and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection
of poems is Are You Sure Kerouac Done It This Way!?
(co-authored with John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger,
OAC Books, 2021). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO
with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named
Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks,
near the Gasconade River, where there are also
many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, 
Dwell: Poems About Home. Purchase here.

The Return – Melissa Ferrer

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Photo: Bogomil Mihaylov
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.
1 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.

Thought For Food Promotional 1

they are under my comforter of stars – promise clutter

redwoods
there will be an October surely,
my love,
suspended in fog
spiced with bark
& trapped beneath a canopy of mules
blocking the heavens from knowing
which way the wind blows
i do not catch in the chill
nothing here brings me to you
i see love in the gold glint on green
in the heat of the day
at night, the dogs hear
my mournful howls
i am not for you
as the redwoods are
i shed my leaves
before the first frost
i think you are the only one
to have ever seen the moon,
my love,
with candied cheek awe
trimming back eyelashes
exposing lakes of arcane calm
it is silent in comptche
we shuffle across dirt paths
i grab our elbows
to make us stargaze
they too are under
these lights
when you shine on them
won’t you send my love?
i grew accustomed to living without you,
my love,
here where the candlewax waves
crash against the stones
& the crow’s caw pierces my heart
my heart that aches for you
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