Three-liter Cola, zeppelin of delight and angst, we imagined your dares at once contained and floating to our bodies.
We imagined each empty spin— steady propeller or crash against knees, crunch of plastic, bunch of: do it like this.
We imagine how simple a twist of the wrist until our turn, a bumbled one, bounce of the bottle, tilt of the world lasting the longest seconds.
Look how you settled, the unholy and holy—genesis of desire swelling in gasps.
When not teaching at the Community College of Denver, Brian Dickson avoids driving as much as possible to connect with the quotidian and the sacred. He also serves as an editor for New Feathers Anthology as well. His chapbook, A Child’s Sketch of the Afterlife, recently came out from Finishing Line Press. Find him at www.dicksonwrites.com.
Goddess Wept a Daydream into echoes of silence and storm
Sarah danced through green grass across a field, a river and rocky plains gathered water from the well-springs, bathed in starlight infused pools
Morsels of sweet grew on reeds and beds made from its stalks Beside the fresh baskets… Fire spoke with moonlight and sleep behind her eyes
Dreams of quiet leopards in the night Raindrops petal upon thatch-top and stone As light painted gently upon her eyes
Fresh air and dew pooling water in baskets whispers of times yet passed the catch of small fish she washed with root and healed with twig in devotion to spirit and great grass sky
holding hands with the wind
Lee Frankel-Goldwater is a teacher and a poet seeking the sage’s path. He knows it’s about the journey, and yet dreams of the destination. One of peace, one of less fear, or worry, or shame for all. He believes there’s some good in this world worth fighting for, and prays that his every deed is made into this backdrop. Lee writes at the Writer’s Block, dances at Mi Chantli, and plays around Boulder, CO. He’s always ready for a story.
My Atomic Pin-Up
Binion’s Horseshoe is a rest stop on death’s highway.
We’re in the hotel’s north-facing room
on a sofa shaped like an old-style riverboat.
Igneous cracked succulents are pinned
like voodoo dolls against the sky.
Miss Atomic Energy
shakes fallout from her dress
and it frissons like a forest of morels
on the glitter gulch carpet.
The Evening Telegraph said she radiated loveliness.
A new part of the soul wakes up
when the desert wind cries on Frenchman’s Flat.
What does it sound like?
Like 16,800 years ago
when Lake Bonneville
bled out into southern Idaho
leaving the salt flats
to homegrown racers and their Gadgets
the speedway a buster-jangle
of roadsters and lakesters
winking like Trinitite on dry white rime.
Me and my atomic pin-up
put on sunglasses and count down from ten.
The sky, Gerboise bleue with teeth like flamethrowers;
our old-style riverboat upshot in a knothole of sand
and scorpion gunwale
And Then, Gone
When we decided to end it, I was stuck thinking of the night
---------with fried rice and blue calcite and all the orange
light over rosé in the only restaurant open in town so late.
-- - ------ - - -- It is the middle of winter in Marfa, and you watch me
- - - - - - - - --- run through downtown in the width of the blue moon
to the car so we can drive to the lookout off Highway 90
- - - ----and watch the Marfa lights flare, bounce
and fall back down beside twitching desert grass.
---------------- - - ------ There’s a couple next to us who has been camping out here,
---------------------------documenting this phenomenon every night for a week.
- - - - -They tell us each light has its own behaviors, own patterns.
---------------- They speak about aliens and energy. The army and angels. You’re not
-----------------convinced by any of them. You whisper human possibilities
-----------------in my ear: maybe they’re cars moving on the highway
------- over the mountain, truck lights, fast food signs…
--------I point to one yellow light pulsating so faint far
------- out in the field, I must convince myself it even exists:
pulsing and fading, fading, and pulsing, and then,
gone. There is a moment when all the lights go,
--------and it is simply dark. Why do we keep watching?
---------------- Goddammit,
--------------------------if we want to know what this is
--------------------------why don’t we just run out and grab them?
But we don’t.
--------------------------The lights reappear again and bounce off each other
---------------- in silence. Melting and glowing.
---------------- We don’t want to know what they are.
The joy is the obsession, the pondering, the pulsing.
And the total darkness. Yes.
---------------- It is also that.
Elaina Edwards (she/her) is a poet from the Texas Hill Country. She has her MFA from Texas State University. She is an ecofeminist poet that loves to dabble in the supernatural. When not reading or writing, she watches way too much X files with her partner, Stephen.
I.
Dress the table while I’m out
with the cloth stitched in
sideways sliced strawberries
lay the sharpened swords
whisking wands and Florida water
for the wrists
for the three gallons of rain
required to make one tomato as red
and ready as this
II.
Mince each morsel of carrot
into a carrier pigeon
to the heart
bearing blessings from
your childhood table
the one with the wobbly
leg and Sunday paper stains
III.
Pick and sniff the peach peel
under your fingernails
like perfume and drain the
French press slow
IV.
Notice how a split open
blood orange looks both
like a pair of lungs and
a pussy and recall
there is more than one way
to breathe
V.
Look at our life according
to jars in cabinets
emptied and stuffed
with hours of ourselves
homemade hand-pickled
in a city where you see
the seasons change not
so much in the trees
as in the coconut oil
on our shelf
VI.
Open your skull like a pomegranate
and rub your thumbs inside
the ruby rind to remember
you are not Persephone no
you are only pleasure seeker
with a mother
VII.
Stuff your sharp tongue
down in your lip like
dip and let loose the licker
that thrusts hungrily into
the night sky like honey
so sweet we rub it on
our tongues on
our wounds on
the names of our lovers
VIII.
Breathe and let 500 butterflies
fall out with wet wings beating
against your molars and let your
belly hang out and your bowls
overflow and whisk me away
whatever you do
whisk me away
with you
Jordan Stanley (she/they) is a queer poet and content writer who loves to perform at open mics across Los Angeles where she now lives. She has pieced together her heart and found home in Boulder, CO; Brooklyn, NY; Boston, MA; Elon, NC; and Suffield, CT over the last 10 years. Follow her on Instagram @jaystanz for writing, sewing, cooking and baking enthusiasm.
I did not see the naked man on King Street. He was one of those “Nudes for God.” Instead, Jacob slides in like a snail on pink slime. wailing, as high-pitched as a gibbon.
He rubs his puckered eyes roughly. And his jelly-mouth ripples in the clock face. Five in the morning detaches itself from time. His kiss unties me though it smells of dead cologne.
I am only here so I can be here when he’s here. My secret life continues it existence in him. But he’s kin to a decomposed insect. I squeeze his innards into a likeness of myself.
Well-Spread
There are parts of me everywhere. Like curled up on a park bench. Or preaching the dead cult of sex. Or naked and looking for work.
I deserve breeze but reap the stillness. My gloomy fire begins as ashes. In the reading room of the public library, that’s my head opened wide at page 3.
Herman Melville spits in my ear. I follow a handsome man into a doctor’s office. I slink into a movie theater, drink out of an army boot. Snow or gay bar, the flakes prove inconclusive.
Andrej Bilovsky (he/him) is a gay poet and performance artist. Former editor of Masculine-Feminine and Kapesnik. His poetry can be found at the Quiver and Down In The Dirt.
don’t open your eyes yet the want is ravaged and set alight I will call your pain to me name your beasts to do my bidding
call me back
to worship with wanton knees and eyes nail my collarbones to the bedroom door and drink from my bruised lips a dream like this demands a hungered sacrifice
call me back
to your kingdom on this starless night the rain so reckless in the shadows let me dream of your trembling spine and pry open your butterfly ribs
call me back
to plant moonflowers in your blood they only bloom carefree in the dark let me honour you with what remains beyond skin and crushed days
call me back
to your bed, your voice drowns out the world. Was it even real? I just want to feel you – here and here. all I touch is glass
awakening still / again
BY KATE MACALISTER
christmas morning constellations traced on your skin / undressed / spilled / beneath the quiver ing lashes and breathless light /enfolded below the midwinter dawn / so stolen between
the call of the day and the coffee /(do you want to go and see the worst of me?) /heaped clothes on the creaking floor / a tangible whisper in the curtains / the red farewell /stars sighing in your image/
and the resurrection of today/ sheltered twilight /can’t hide the embers mined in / the dead of night /still on my lips / I am still starving /my heart half eaten / still obsessed/with what remains
of the distant bedrock / the thunderwounds of yesterday / (do I not burn when I bleed?) I hold your hand/ through these hurting dreams to support their weight/ still /again/
we summoned and witnessed / an unspeakable trinity come / here / tonight /
Despair Desire & the small Death
(prayer is whatever you say on your knees) and if you can’t forgive what lurks below the skin / remember / I am fire-tongued and anointed by your touch /deciphering the holy infliction
of having been wild and perfect for a moment / (thirst to thirst) / surrender now / (your fingers in my hair / my mouth / covered in my blood) / hold me / in this space
we are rebuilding the universe / my words are the bare bones / painted with the colours
you have shown me
/ l o v e /
this is how we retaliate / desecrate the decaying temple /with solemn lunar devotions feral laments / spellbound in the marked sheets / the unmade bed
(I think we’d survive in the wild)
all hallowed to be read in case of emergency
we crossed this ocean /I lost the ground / the moon drew me/in /my crimson tides /beckoning your hands in red /on the mirroring surface / the light of early dawn come falling apart
celestial bodies of water / on the fine shoreline before sleep betroth my hands / to your breath/your elfin throat vowing /gasping / on half of the dead stars to be strange / to be beautiful / to be wild / to be/ open water
crashing on broken shells / blessed October sand a litany / a siren song / an unchanging state of affairs I am not going to hurt you /cannot resist the call of continued disturbance and fractures on the wind
a tear bled / into black ink stains/blossoms / into a word echoes into a constant dream yet untold /let’s send a postcard from where we fell
some things are better on paper /some things are better signed and sealed / in blood
When we share our stories, we realize that we are not alone with it. We begin to see the system that behind violence, injustice and exploitation. Telling our story is the connecting moment to take action and to initiate change.” Kate MacAlister (she/her) is an author, feminist activist and founder of the multilingual community arts and literature project Stimmen der Rebellion/Dengê Berxwedane/Voices of Rebellion. Her works have been published in journals and anthologies all over the world. Kate’s debut chapbook “songs of the blood” is filled with poetry that speaks of human connection and the dreams of revolution. Coffee, her cat Bella and, naturally, her activist friends are particularly important for her creative process. Find Kate on Instagram at @kissed.by_fire.
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
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
First, election day, and then
not so strange being close in bed
but first being strange
but not being in bed
being in body kind;
being slow, being not hurried for pleasure
being not at all the fantasie in men’s eyes;
being two, but not us, we
being lips, being breasts,
being you, being me, the bed being round,
plunging line of winter being one,
careful we, cutting away what is death.
Not even necessary, love
but there is love
and earlier there was my sadness for summer again
and the black dog chewed a squirrel
winter people crawled into tin holes.
Election day, I choose you, choose me, choose you
and earlier, the old woman wheeled to the polling place by her son,
a great book in her lap
fat boy in a green jacket, sparrow on a black roof
orange room very dry
but not dry, very lonely
but not lonely
only the blue jay
only the blue jay pecking on the window
not flying but then flying
from the black roof
not hearing my own voice loving for a long time
and then not even necessary, love,
not so strange being close in bed
but first being strange
being in body kind
careful we
falling through the fruits of winter
cutting away what is death
Susan Zeni wants her poems to tell the stories of people living on the margins of society. She lived in Manhattan on Avenue A, in Chinatown and in Harlem for five years, Seattle for ten, and is now ensconced back in the Midwest after years of teaching community college. Publications and honors include a Lucille Medwick Award for a poem with an humanitarian theme, “Black Angel,” published in the New York Quarterly, danced by the Erick Hawkins dance troupe, and read up on stage with Gwendolyn Brooks; a Seattle Weekly portrait of Ralph and Mary moved out of their Second Avenue Hotel digs by the Seattle Art Museum; and “The Street Walker’s Guide to Wealth,”recently published by the Minneapolis StarTribune.
Susan gets her kicks playing accordion, having been in a number of bands, including the Polkastra and the all grrrl klezmer band, the Tsatskelehs, as well as performing solo at local art openings, Quaker events, and farmers’ markets.
south broadway press 