As giant ants march ahead in nightly arrays
Demonstrating against the ruling humans
Along the main street of every major city
Hordes of hordes of vampires flood in, screaming
Aloud, riding on hyenas and
Octopuses, waving skeletons
In their hairy hands, whipping at old werewolves
Or all-eyed aliens standing by
With their blood-dripping tails
Gathering behind the masses are ghosts and spirits
Of all the dead, victims of fatal diseases
Murders, rapes, tortures, wars, starvation, plagues
Led by deformed devils and demons
As if in an uprising, to seek revenge
On every living victor in the human shape
Some smashing walls and fences, others
Barbecuing human hearts like inflated frogs
Still others biting at each other’s soul around black fires
All in a universal storm of ashes and blood
Up above in the sky is a red dragon flying by
With a heart infected by the human virus
Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Jodi Stutz Award in Poetry (2020) & publications in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among others across 45 countries.
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.
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.
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.
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.
morbid savior born
on the doorstep of a corporation
the poor, voracious, gorge the forfeited thorns of corrupt senators opportunistic authoritarians they savor disproportionate offshore fortunes worship incorruptible corpses while gormandizing landlords orbit our torn world
i am the disorder in my aborted
forty fourth form
orthodox corpus
my torso deteriorates at the crematorium
or by ordinary worms
elaborate airport territories
vacant expanses for corona
dictatorial
not for foreign territories or shores
commemorate our glorious world
commemorate our glorious world
André O. Hoilette is a Jamaican born poet living in Denver. He is a Cave Canem alum and former editor of ambulant: A Journal of Poetry & Art and Nexus magazine. Hoilette is currently pursuing MFAs in Fiction and Poetry from Regis University. His work has been published in Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander (A global anthology of social justice poetry) , Role Call, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Cave Canem 10th anniversary reader, milk magazine and other publications.
Our grandchildren are in the vanguard
of human evolution, autism possibly
the latest mutation, since change
has one leg up on adaptation.
Trouble is, the microbes
mutate faster than we do
and have had more practice.
In the matter of intelligence they
have outguessed us more than once.
It will require our best to see this through.
The past two Halloweens
my autistic grandson has gone
trick-or-treating as a hazmat zombie,
as if he owned a crystal ball
for the coronavirus.
Maybe we should turn our welfare
over to children, who might be
more adaptable than
millionaires over seventy
masquerading as world leaders.
Gerry Sloan is a poet and musician living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He has two poetry collections: Paper Lanterns (2011) and Crossings: A Memoir in Verse (2017), recent work appearing in Elder Mountain, Cave Region Review, Xavier Review, and Slant. He often defaults to hot tea and old movies for solace.
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.
Someone set fire to the graveyard this morning. It wasn’t like anything you’ve ever seen. I didn’t get emotional when I saw it, unlike the blue hairs who stopped their Buicks on the side of 44th, genuflecting and crying and clutching the crosses around their necks. I pulled my truck over and got out just as sirens started up out east. I expected it to smell bad, like maybe the bodies and coffins would start burning too, but it just smelled like a campfire. I loved that smell. Especially with ribbons of raw venison skewered over top, blood and fat dripping into the heart of the pit. A thermos of whiskey in one hand and your old man leaning back in the chair adjacent, rolling smokes slow and careful like he’s got all the time in the world.
The fire felt right. Like cleansing the clutter that’s grown so slowly you don’t even notice until you can see it in the corners of your eyes when you try to relax. I’m not saying I did it, or that I even know who did. I’m just saying it didn’t strike me as an evil deed. I wish it could have been that easy when we gutted dad’s house and piled everything on the lawn for the estate sale. Just haul out that saggy blue couch and old tube TV and rip up the baby puke carpet and douse it all with a healthy dose of Boy Scout water and light it up. Howdy, Mrs. Johnson! Come on out from behind those curtains and bring some marshmallows! Dad would have wanted it that way, I bet.
Maybe an angel started the fire as a favor to the overused land. Fire brings up fresh grass and stronger trees. Maybe Michael the Archangel snuck down here with a can of lighter fluid. Maybe he knows that graveyards are a vanity that were never God’s wanting. Boy was that fire something.
Whoever did it knew what they were doing. When firemen started spraying water all over, I considered how much gasoline it would have taken to make sure those flames burned as fast and hot as they did. We’ve had a wet spring, so it wouldn’t have been easy. Then again, whoever did it could have gotten creative and sided with the three S’s — sodium chlorate crystals, sugar, and sulfuric acid. I sniffed the air. It was hard to say.
An old woman put her hand on my shoulder and asked if I had a relative in the graveyard on account of me watching for so long. Yes, I told her. She waited for more. Then her wrinkled face puckered up like a dog’s asshole and she went back to crying and saying over and over again Lord have mercy. I wanted to tell her, he does. Look straight ahead.
Patricia McCrystal is the recent recipient of the Slippery Elm Prose Prize and the founder of VIRAGO, a womxn’s writing circle. Her work can be found on PBS and in Heavy Feather Review, South Broadway Ghost Society, Birdy Magazine, and more. She’s pursuing her MFA in Fiction at Regis University.
The squirrel’s insides were draining out of its mouth
again as the day before.
Expansion: slipping away its squirrel-ness,
the thick and red of it,
jelly from a donut.
As pavement moves beneath me,
my closed eyes reveal
my mother leaving our family dog to die alone.
My mother only saw one being die.
Her mother’s breath stumbling
death yellow in the
muted light.
The harsh rhythm of the monitor
beginning to flatten into a continuous scream.
She watched her brother crawl on top of the body,
seeing her brother’s tears for the first time.
In the shower the next day,
through salt and hard water,
she saw her mother with her.
Her naked body, whole,
uncut.
My mother told me
that her mother’s breasts were
large and heavy and beautiful.
My mother is not usually so poetic.
Her brother would also die alone,
squatting on the damp concrete of
his father’s basement
or in
the fluorescent cave of the hospital.
My mind searches darkness
for details I’ve forgotten, or was
never told.
Sores for skin and holes for teeth.
The colorful toothbrush
I delivered to him
struggled against the
deep gray of his surroundings,
his broken-plate smile,
his voice thick with
gruff southern-ness.
I never saw his body
whole and complete
after he left.
Maybe his son saw him.
Air escapes
in fresh, burning bursts.
My body and mind turn
the corner.
My cousin,
born one day before me,
our baby hair matching,
fine and translucent.
His young body would
twist, and shake
knees kissing during late nights
of golden, childhood laughter.
The poster hanging on his
wall, beginning to fade.
Elvis’s slick black
hair almost white in places.
My cousin named his newborn
daughter Elena, and only knew
her a few short weeks
before he left.
Years of drowning led to
years of sobriety.
A girlfriend, stepdaughters.
What he called happiness,
through the digital blue of the screen.
Reaching out over miles
and years.
He wanted to
tell me about his life.
His baby.
The blood in my ears grows
louder as I near the end of my route.
Mind searching for a place
to hang my sadness.
No one ever confirmed
how or why he left.
Such a watery light.
Pale skin and summer freckles.
Pisces, double.
The end of the Zodiac
straddles the edge of the veil.
He was never here completely.
Two weeks after he left,
his daughter left too.
The light of the screen
again bringing its obituary,
its haunting.
The words,
“goodbye my angel”
all lowercase
raced toward me.
No capital letters
of devastation.
No place to hold greif.
The tightness in my chest twists
on each inhale.
Again, my closed eyes reveal
a picture of my cousin,
holding his newborn daughter.
Anxious curve of a smile,
a small bundle of pink.
Rubber presses the dark pavement in repetition.
The squirrel continues to shed its form.
When the flesh is gone, I am considering adding its bones to a shrine.
Small, white.
Solid and hard enough
to hold something.
This is the closest I have been to the process,
what happens after they leave.
I want to stay for the whole thing.
Ashley Howell Bunn is pursuing her MFA in poetry through Regis University where she is also a graduate writing consultant. She reads and helps develop community engagement for the literary journal Inverted Syntax. Her work has previously appeared in The Colorado Sun, the series Head Room Sessions, and more. When she isn’t writing, she teaches and practices yoga and runs a small personal business centered around healing. She lives in Denver, CO with her partner and child. Instagram: @howellandheal
especially after the last time
our pizza was made by hand
sanitizer, but I believe in second
toppings & chances. I wear my mask
covered with butterflies & wonder
if the young man in the next car
chuckles at me for taking that chance
in nature-filled protection
while he has no fabric for his mouth.
I don’t want to speak for him
as a ventriloquist but I am uneasy
& worried out here in my sky
watching for birds & clouds
& the coming storm that may
or may not happen. Of course
this is me daydreaming
of last year where every surface
was immaculate as we drift
together in a winged migration
back inside. I have to admit
I have cash to pay with & can
include a nice tip as I also have time
to embrace this time. We all can
wait outside together as three birds
swoop in a motion many never do.
After the cashier hands me my pizzas
in their warm boxes, I can pause
one more time here searching
to remember when I offered change
or leftover food to anyone as a cardinal
stops for a discarded crust.
Dennis Etzel Jr. lives in Topeka, Kansas with Carrie and the boys where he teaches English at Washburn University. His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others.
I ask you ..to take this cup from me. I don’t want ..to die alone in a white room ..some Monday, my lungs ..full, but without ..a breath left.
[TV]
BY KEVIN RABAS
…….I. …….You can stop the TV, …….get off your phone, and write. …….It may hurt …….to think, but you can.
…….II. …….If you don’t write ……….or make songs …….or paint, you have ……….to go and live in some …….other person’s dream.
[unintended birthday gift]
BY KEVIN RABAS
The neighbors have it, the pastor and his 6 kids, held a bday party the night before the lockdown started, and now they’ve got it, every single one.
Past Poet Laureate of Kansas (2017-2019) Kevin Rabas teaches at Emporia State University, where he leads the poetry and playwriting tracks and chairs the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Journalism. He has thirteen books, including Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner. He is the recipient of the Emporia State President’s and Liberal Arts & Sciences Awards for Research and Creativity, and he is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry.
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.
south broadway press 