I have stolen the dandelions scattered their seeds across
fields of tulips and tamarind I have felt desire crack
my lips apart under the weight of its slippery skin
What fresh figs, what sunny flowers What breaking hearts
rot beneath the hills beneath sticky sidewalk pavements
We grow older but not duller hovering translucent over
calendar time
Sara Whittemore is a poet living in Houston, Texas. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa. Her work has recently appeared in Interim Magazine, Juniper Press and Tiny Spoon, and others. In addition to being a poet she is an artist, alien and cat person. You can find her on instagram @sarafromsaturn.
drowning those on the surface underneath it’s downpour
you are very much as the spring this year
we can only pray hope is real practice deep breaths plan in positive accord
as in what may grow
closer
perhaps the squirrels will not eat the strawberries but better to put a barrier between them and the fruit
I’m sure the weeds and wild grass will stay a few weeks more green before the summer sizzle
maybe we may take advantage of both the growing tumble and the withering
to pull from the rain and the land the best we can
to add to the home we share within us
set the table prepare the meal and may neither one of us be cut
the cosmic within and without
BY TED VACA
YOU MIGHT WANT
to think deeply
about where you
come from
To Think Deeply About Where You Come From
TO
THINK DEEPLY
ABOUT WHERE
YOU COME
FROM
to think
deeply
about
to open the eternal
gold-fringe lined
burgundy curtain
on the stage manager's signal
let the show begin
step upon the stage
stomach in turmoil
mind electric
your eyes
wide wild
and excited
to accept what is
within
is without
to accept what is
without is within
the universe s
s p
l i
a r
out and in
unfolds engulfs
consistently for a manufactured
lineage of time
the universe
doesn’t care about
TIME
time manmade time the cursor
from birth to death and how much
can you accomplish
time the accomplishment
measure of worth and meaning
time the killer the waste of
the sought after for proof of
deeds and diplomas
the microscopic
is C O S M I C
the cosmic is
microscopic
the embryo in their sack
utero evolving galaxies
spinning and star beings
born in a chemical-chance
at becoming only to be seen
in awe by the dark matter
that surrounds
Incomprehensible!
our eternal selfs
witnessed
mirrored not above
not below
but all around
breaking the novelty of direction
the compass explodes and the earthly mind
is set free of dimensions then intuned with the way
then again becoming unknown
as a dream
separated
from the expansion
we’ve not far to go
to reach & realize
Ted Vaca, Denver poet father lover crime fighter / semi holy somewhat sweet can be bitter / published here and there / Founder of The Mercury Cafe poetry slam / Coach of the 2006 Championship Denver Slam Team / Member of 1995 Championship slam team from Asheville NC / Intergalactic Provocateur
Incantation to my Wisdom Teeth
I imagine you being lifted up and out
easily
not by the touch
of an object or an instrument
or a hand
but by way
of your own command.
I see you floating out
as if you simply
wanted to leave–
no force, no ache, no blood.
After,
you are not gone from me
but returned
to the Earth, to the Air.
You are less bone
than soil
less soil than sky.
You are four moons
in the soft night
so there is no part of me
that needs to be healed
only these glowing orbs
that I have known.
And now, they have
relinquished me.
Ode to the Barn Swallow
I love a beautiful bird
that cracks open the daybreak
and re-configures the setting
of the sun. I take her into me.
Everything I know of touch
has been learned from the gloss
of her feathers
and the swallow
down her orange throat.
When I am to finally live,
it will be with the arrival
of hope. The hope
that she will surrender
the whole sky
that was once under
her wings so that she
might return to me.
On Prince Edward Island
a corridor opens
along a path of red pines
long necks
reaching toward a starless
November, dirt like burnt sugar
litters the path I ache
to taste it
but pine needles lace
in and out, at once sharp,
and when the night settles, soft
I am searching for pieces of broken
promises, but when I tire
I will turn myself in
Jessica Bagwell is primarily a poet, but also dabbles in creative nonfiction. Her work appears in Needle Poetry, Sorin Oak Review, and New Literati. In her poems, she pays homage to the lyric and explores formal experimentalism. When she is not writing, she enjoys practicing & teaching yoga, taking long walks, and sampling local breweries with her partner.
Our ship cuts a quiet wake across the Río de la Plata The harbor of Buenos Aires slow motions away from us The muddy haze of pollution hangs within the labyrinths of canyon streets, thick o’er the poor south barrios
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The fringed skyline further behind us now The sun silverplates the water, dead fish bobbing Ships far asea coming in or leaving this port & to our east the dark risen shore of Uruguay
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Wind strong up on the deck, slicing the bright sun That once-far bank & isles nearing, heavy with thick-leafed trees
Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour whose poetry appears in over 400 journals on six continents, and 20 collections of poetry – including On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019), Caribbean Interludes (Origami Poems Project, 2022) and the upcoming In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2011) and thrice nominated for the Best of the Net. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her adventures at www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or https://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.
Sniffling nose, French braids just a little frazzled, mainly the mid left of the twins, Neck crooked down over a phone knook’d away in her lap, as she’s sitting on the barstool, crossed-legged, like the line from a Jason Isbell song, “Elephant”, that doesn’t need to be heard more than once, unless songs with E Minor hammer-ons, men who bang women before cancer takes the last shot and the indignity of death is your kind of driving vibe.
A question as thick and as gentle as a trunk lays on my shoulder, again:What music do you listen to these days, so many years later? You were so young, the world has grown so ol…
I do my best to shrug the weight of it from me, but I hear it’s somber, patient bellowed breath
As my crossed-legged friend and I both sip from our pre-shift pints, We stare at our phones for a while, and the bellows seem almost gone. She washes dishes behind the counter and chides about moving a new mattress in with her boyfriend who thinks he can do it all, and the folks around me chuckle and grin but
The trunk lets out a hot, woeful snort at the word boyfriend and my mind, my heart, since September and all the more in that moment, is pressed over there, wherever you might be
Because I don’t know…The trunk coils kindly…where you are…It coils tighter, I can feel the hundreds of muscle ridges pressing along the lines of my clavicle…I don’t know if you are still…Here…With us. The trunk twists softly, I feel its leathery skin, and thousands of whiskery vibraissie scan my temples as I release seven words that hang on my heart heavier than the 7-ton creature behind me.
I don’t know what happened to you.
My friend and some customers are sharing beer-tender memes and shooting the shit, and they would tell you that I was, I suppose. Words came out mouths and glasses were filled/refilled they say, but I only paid attention to the rumbles of the breathing, vibrating through the massive, right tusk I laid my head against, as I ask: Areyou resigned to the futility of failing to relax between shifts like my frazzled French braided friend beside me, smirking as the freshly tapped pale ales pass from her hands to folks encircled with Pretty Lights playing overhead? What shows have you seen? Which stage lights have passed over that childhood scar from the pit bull on your left and the fence on your right?Whose arms center you tightly at packed festivals, whose voice fills you up and fills up the car rides to concerts? I remember when they told me you jumped out of your father’s truck while he drove. Out, out, out, your mind screamed from its fog, before the morning marine layer even had a chance to blow past our campus. Who is there to hold you kindly, when the world tries to tear you apart?
Oh, oh right—I lift my head from the tusk—bed, beds-and-moving, people laughing by me, sour beer someone put in my hand, lift it up as my friend wipes the counter but its snout thwaps between my shoulder blades, so I swivel in my stool, my hand moving along the left tusk, and I stand and ask Areyou spraying down tables with windex and rolling out the bullshit of life from your shoulders, as you recall its daily dose by declaring that you will lay on that queen sized mattress at the base of the stairs rather than fall down a flight while carrying the couch because this move with your man is…is someone carrying you to bed and wiping your hair off the floor? Like that song?Is the weight of the world bearing down on your smile, the one I remember, as you and the girls stuffed trash bags to the brim, smucker’s brand crustables wrappers, half eaten red apples, milk cartons, symbols of simpler, sweeter times to live.
It’s bellowing breaths are long and woeful, and synced with mine as I walk closer to ask Live…do you live with dignity? More than ‘do you live’ do youlive with, that Latin word I wrote on the white board everyday before the bell, had us repeat in chorus as a class, that class theme, when students still had the pre-covid mental focus to not merely rotely remember but find real rhythm in a theme? That word that inscribed itself on the hearts of the goody two shoes girls who loved you unconditionally and always posed for class pics with you because no matter what y’all were the squad, as different as you were, that word that is burning behind my eyes and along the ridges of my mind, the base of my larynx and the hollow of my voice.
Anima
It’s tail is swish-swishing softly as I declare that word, anima, so I move closer, it’s lengthy eyelashes almost touching the brim of my ballcap, I say it again, Anima! We’d call out with grins before the exit bell. Anima, I’d tell you as I took a knee beside you lowered, on the days you were high as a kite, or elevated in anger from the shouts and screams surrounding home, or falling into exhaustion in the cradle of your plastic flimsy class seat and you’d find your hands loosening their clench around your mascot emblazoned pencil when we’d look at one another and say: “Anima.” A life full of life. That’s how we defined it.
The elephant saunters off, and I am left with you on my heart at the bar, until I let you go too with this benediction: May you rub that word, anima, into the helix and antihelix of your right ear for others to smell when they draw in close to hug you, may you dip your toothbrush in it to keep it on your breath before bed, may it be hummed in the cadence of your morning stroller jogs, with at least one squad mate, the one who wrote to me on my birthday so many years ago, and told me at 15 that you are a
beautiful and hardworking
mom.
Anima. Are you living, are you living with a life full of life, Teresita?
Kevin Foote (he/him) is a writer, teacher, and explorer. He was born and raised on The Central Coast of California, but now calls Green Mountain his home. When he’s not in class with his students, he loves investigating restaurants in the Denver region, trail running, and inviting friends and followers into the writing process online and in poetry slams. Kevin’s first collection, Cabin Pressure, is a work full of the woe and wonder of teaching, the unsung moments of victory in mental health struggles, and the unabashed joy of experiencing the natural world along The Front Range. You can see his published poems and works in progress on @feastsonfoote
Maybe I should stop writing about glitter— but sometimes I wonder
if it’s the only proof still clinging to what’s left of us. Do you miss
the sparkle of my eye shadow? Golden branded butterfly kisses fluttered
onto your gilded cheeks. I guess I just like shiny things that stay. Like a shimmery
permanence, or a luster memento of everything I’ve loved enough to touch.
Another Period Poem
Fucking someone should be easy, but I’m on my period on a first date, and I want
to negotiate a scene— but not that one from The Shining. So anyway, a man walks into a bar
and I’m bleeding. He says I’m happy you decided to meet, and my smile lacks sparkle because I’m just here
for the ride, and one of us knows that’s not going to happen. I order something fruity with a tiny
umbrella. My cherry red lipstick ghosts into the soft red bar-light glow. I’m on his lap when I say we’re not
having sex. He puts his hands up— a surrender, says I’d just like to kiss you, and we do until I’m kissing
him with my eyes open: bored and waiting for the punchline. An older man walks into a bar, and I’m still bleeding.
He says I don’t drink but looks thirsty. I savor the thought of being a novelty, but he looks everywhere but me
and his fingers fidget, never reach for mine. He walks me home and doesn’t invite himself in.
A woman walks into a coffee shop, it’s a week and a half later and I’m still bleeding. I’m cursing the bloated
baggage of the breakup that brought this all on. She says I’d like to kiss you, and we do and she leaves. I want to feel
something, will myself to exchange numbness for lust. I’m empty and aching to be filled by something like soft
hands. The boy made of sand let himself be swallowed by a gentler sea. I wish
instead of blood I could bury him under the rough sheets of some unknown
bed. I don’t want to write another poem about this boy or my period,
but I guess I’ll opt for the latter because it’s the one that always comes back.
Tyler Hurula (she/her) is a poet born and raised in Denver, Colorado. She is queer, polyamorous, and lives with her wife and two cats. Author of Love Me Louder (Querencia Press). Her poems have been published previously in Anti-Heroin Chic, Aurum Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, and more. She values connection, authenticity, and vulnerability, and tries to encompass these values in her writing as well as everyday life.
IT IS GETTING DARK ON MY BODY AND I CAN NO LONGER SEE MY FINGERTIPS. MY GENDER IS NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK. MY BODY IS AFRAID OF EVERYTHING. MY GENDER ALWAYS CARRIES MACE IN ITS POCKET AND KEYS BETWEEN ITS FINGERS. MY BODY SLEEPS SOMETIMES BUT MY GENDER IS ALWAYS AWAKE. WE EAT TOGETHER, AT THE SAME TABLE, BUT THE FOOD IS DIFFERENT ON EACH PLATE. WE TRY A LITTLE OF EACH OTHER’S MEALS, FEELING WHAT FUELS THE OTHERS FUEL US TOO. I AM DISTRACTED BY MY BODY, MY BODY IS DISTRACTED BY MY GENDER, AND MY GENDER IS DISTRACTED BY LIGHT, AIR, AND THE ENERGY LEFT IN THE ROOM ONCE EVERYONE LEAVES. MY GENDER IS DRY ROSE PETALS, AND WIND, AND THE SPINNING FEELING IN YOUR GUT ONCE WE’VE LOCKED EYES. SUMMER IS GONE BUT WINTER IS JUST AS LONELY. AT LEAST AT NIGHT MY COMFORTER MAKES THE SHAPE OF YOUR BODY NEXT TO ME AND WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES I CAN STILL SMELL YOU. OUR GENDERS ARE FRIENDS, IN THE REALM WHERE ONLY GENDERS LIVE, THEY DANCE AND TALK AND SHARE SMOKES OUT OF THEIR BEDROOM WINDOWS, LIGHTING INCENSE TO HIDE THE EVIDENCE. MY GENDER IS THE FLOATING PYRAMID IN THE PURPLE WINDOW OF A MAGIC 8 BALL: SHAKEN, FULL OF ANSWERS, AND SLIGHTLY FROTHY. MY BODY IS JUST AS FROTHY, BUT FILLED WITH QUESTIONS, INSTEAD. EITHER ONE WILL ONLY TELL THE DIVINE TRUTH.
Danni Bergen (they/them) is a poet, photographer, and artist who was born and raised in Denver but has recently relocated to Butte, Montana to try living a little slower on for size. They have an Associate’s of Arts in Theatre from the Community College of Aurora and a Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in creative writing, visual art, and performance from Naropa University. You can see more of their work on dannithealien.com. @dannithealien on Instagram
The green chilis wait to warm the winter’ silence,
smile on its bleak face reflecting on our drowsy stillness
dropping our moist clucks of winter appetite that craves
for the sweet burn on our cold -dry tongues. A handful, as my
mother makes a cut along each, the mouths open as babies’. She
stuffs the ajwain, while dipping each in the soft besan batter, and
drops those saffron-hued bodies, in the boiling dance of groundnut oil
they drift with sizzling joy, and the aroma being wafted unsettles to
resettle us with craving gulps of eagerness to warm our frozen taste
buds. My daughter hops and struts around, cooing off the moments into
those succulent brown, hardened chili bajjis my mother serves warming
our frozen taste buds with each mouthful that
deliciously burns us afloat into the wrapping cold of winter.
Note: Bajji is an Indian delicacy from the state of Andhra Pradesh
Sreekanth Kopuri Ph.D. is an Indian poet, Current poetry editor for The AutoEthnographer Journal Florida, and a Professor of English from Machilipatnam, India. He recited his poetry at Oxford, John Hopkins, Heinrich Heine, and many other universities. His poems appeared in Arkansan Review, Christian Century, A Honest Ulsterman, Chicago Memory House, Two Thirds North, Heartland Review, Tulsa Review, Expanded Field, Contrapuntos IX, Vayavya, to mention a few. His book Poems of the Void was the winner of the Golden Book of the year 2022. He lives in his hometown Machilipatnam with his mother.
My oldest living brother a farmer; a writer, me; my sister a banker; my youngest brother a nuclear bomber pilot; our other two brothers long where our parents have gone, we stare at the dew-starred earth we’ll soon become and, though grown, wonder, like errant planets or wandering asteroids how much more mischief we dare.
Ralph Salisbury (1926-2017) grew up hunting and trapping, for meat and pelts, and laboring on a family farm which had no electricity or running water. He attended university on the GI Bill after WWII and retired as Professor Emeritus from the University of Oregon, Eugene, where he taught for 43 years. His prizewinning memoir, So Far, So Good (recipient of the 2012 Riverteeth Literary Non-Fiction Book Prize), his three books of fiction, and his eleven books of poems evoke his Cherokee-Shawnee-Irish-English-American heritage. Poems from his twelfth book, seeking a publisher, have appeared in Northwest Review, About Place, and elsewhere.
Another Death Bed by Jasmine Nicole Maldonado Dillavou A review by Chris Bullock
“a moment of pause with things that matter”
Jasmine Nicole Maldonado Dillavou
Another Death Bed (but this one is more comfortable, and the sheets just came out of the dryer)
During my time “studying” in China, I learned to see art not as much a hustle and grind, but rather as way of being. While taking an introductory Mandarin class, most classmates said they were pursuing business and politics, which only elicited a nod from the teacher, a middle-aged guy from Shanghai. When I said I enjoyed art, he gave a pause and a grin, then said an artist is blessed because an artist is never bored. From others there I got the same impression, a few said they wanted to be friends with an artist because an artist thinks differently than most, offering refreshing if unpredictable conversation. I had a local Chinese musician buddy who offered me drugs, guns, and often spoke his mind. When I said I was studying education, he interrupted me to say “Chris, you are not teacher. You a fucking artist.”
Artists, poets, and other rabble often share with us the process of discovering themselves and the world, and Another Death Bed by Jasmine Nicole Maldonado Dillavou, or Jasmine, offers that insight of a sitting in her brain as life unfolds. She rummages through the closet for an old stackable chair and offers us a seat in her mind, and she points out things which are as new to her as to you. You might expect to read a few pieces and set the book down, but time has suddenly passed and you have finished the book and wondering if there is something you missed. These are notes in the head of a creative, and as she puts it “a moment of pause with things that matter.”
I had first made her acquaintance upon returning from China to Colorado Springs, and attending a monthly discussion salon put on by Non Book Club Book Club. I had lived in the Springs and never found it repressive or backwards, rather I had come upon the same inspiration that has made it attractive to artists since the Broadmoor School. It was a bohemian life, piecing together rent how I could, playing concerts, going on tour, attending poetry readings, wandering art galleries and alley ways. In contrast to Denver, where quite a few were on hustle and grind mode and unwilling to open up for fear you might plagiarize and profit, in the Springs I found a tight knit and relaxed misfit milieu wherein just seeing differently made you different. Similar to my time in China. Fucking artists.
A few things had changed since my time away, however. All these creative students and faculty from UCCS were not only putting on events, but also inviting you out to see it. Living downtown, meeting up just to chat about what we are up to. Trying out unusual ideas, without even a business plan or a merchandise table. It is true what Denver diehards might say, the Springs could be boring, but it also encouraged you to do something to fill the boredom, even if as in her case, “riding a Lime Scooter the wrong way down Bijou Street with a big black hat on.”
This collection is the writer discovering her mind as it emerges, and sharing it with you. An invitation to sit in her head on an extra chair pulled from the storage closet, a place which is rough around the edges and unaccustomed to guests, but will make do if you show up. A peek into Tejon Street bars, rubbing elbows with the most normal people imaginable, as an artist with other oddballs making things happen in warehouses, restaurants, bookstores, parking lots, on the street, wherever there is an emptiness screaming to be borrowed and occupied temporarily. Art for art’s sake, after which the observer can’t point out any details but just feels like something invisible has changed.
One moment it is “the girl whose thighs don’t touch leaves the bathroom in front of me at the punk show” and the next is finding graffiti in the bar that says “I want to be dead with my dad”. One moment it is living your Boricua being and all the cultural weight and expectations, the next you are really just an artist and you are your “own greatest fear,” writing down your mind as you uncover it. Even after the tour is done, I am still in the chair on a dusty studio floor, and one of the legs of the chair is off-balance. But instead of complaining about it, I just rock a little, for art’s sake.
Tall City (Chris Bullock) was born and got bigger on Long Island, New York. He did a few things then moved to Colorado Springs after trying to study in Paris. He did a few things there too, then moved to Denver, where he went back to school for foreign language. A couple of years on scholarship in China, and he is back in Denver.
south broadway press 