Kevin Foote

September 15, 2025September 16, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

HOPPIN’ LOWRIDER HAS HIM MILE HIGH

BY KEVIN FOOTE

They tell me his momma doesn’t pick up my calls because the
cell bills are stacked high, hiding under the foldout table
tilting in the muddy field along Blosser.

They tell me his momma doesn’t pick up my calls because
the translator on the three-way call wouldn’t know the Mixtec
word for the kind of tears she weeps,

Somewhere between
He’s such a sweet boy believe me, and
All this just for fucking cheaper cilantro, and
Howling wheels appear each night,
Rolls forth a monster of oil and rubber,
Lashes out at him whenever my prayers to La Virgen
make their way from my lips,

Its red hand closer ‘gainst his eyelash curves and cerebral grooves
as he grows up, and as silence sizzles down where I cannot go,
where do I go, Profe? Where do we go from here?

They tell me he won’t bring a knife into my class again,
because the voices won’t stop but his enrollment here will
before anything makes the news.

They tell me graduation is big here, to get a good spot along
Hidden Pines as all the semis packed with cilantro bunches,
broccoli heads, hearts expectant, generational joys, fists full of
wonder, palms opened by the psalms of broken mothers’
broken dreams, will honk, as they cruise past our school.

They tell me the best lowriders in Northwest

will be bouncin’ high,

kids and mommas and a few abuelitas buckled in tight, smiles
brimming, laughter floating freely,

mixing with subwoofers and applause

and the boy for whom I can do nothing,

somewhere beyond our line of sight,
beyond these Sherwin-Williams green
and iron oxide brown fields,
these salt-washed cheeks,
these grey cement cul-de-sac circuits,
where hydraulics creak and squeak as they bounce higher and
higher and higher and…

air horns, wooden ratchets, hoots, hollers, applause.

Did the ‘84 cutlass, with the pearl blue and pink trim,
with the shimmering spinning hubcaps– that one,

yeah, the one bouncing the highest.

Did it launch him high enough?

Can he hear what we hear, a mile high?

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

Two Poems // Sonya Wohletz

September 15, 2025September 17, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

PROMISE: CHIMAYÓ, NEW MEXICO 2011

BY SONYA WOHLETZ

Six thousand feet familiar; the old land grants—sundered
snow lines. Wherein the altar

rises like a fang above the arroyo.
Mourning shrubs staggering in every direction,

withered veins of pink scree;
the strangled herbs of a long-ago wilderness

that promised the same cure that now
can only serve a cunning and calculated death—

for the drought-stiffened hills,
for the blood chalice leaching, as in an act of betrayal—

ice snaking its delicate throat while the
bone/sprung heart seeps its syrups to the cottonwoods.

And there, divided between the horned moon
and the deciduous cycle of trails,

that shrine waits for her, for us,
for those that labored the acequias,

for those shot down at the approach of Good Friday.
Hundreds of miles of penitents

stringing along the Camino Real
after the image of a dead man,

hanged on the green tree of life,
an ivory tumor above the well

of promises. I curled myself
into its depths, while the peregrine winds

rolled through the ponderosa, the piñón.
And thought it meant

to revive me, though I suffered from
a misuse of suffering that no miracle

could calm. I could only feed;
feed the elements captured in those dense idols.

And I recall the friend that brought some
miracle dirt to my mother when she

could no longer remember the place
where the marriage was celebrated,

where it sustained itself in banquet,
as a union of forms, as promissory anguish,

now writ in the yeso & minerals
upon the bultos of those bad centuries.

I contemplate their
blessed and barren ground, inflicted

inside my yearned-for humility, a plastic bag
near the feet of the plastered virgen,

who presided our home impassively.
Or, perhaps she did doctor us—

scale by slimed scale. Each year of the failed family.
And did her Christ then

slide his death into your skin as you
sank your breath

into the blue night, speaking—no, proclaiming—
(for what I can’t quite name)

in dream, as though recalling the command—
Thief, enter through us.

PROMESA 2: CHIMAYÓ, NEW MEXICO

BY SONYA WOHLETZ

The tree of life rises above the pocito,
wherein the earth—tunneled with strange injury.
I pin a heart to your holy name
and feed my blood, my bandage,
to the green roots of the mountain.
A miracle appendaged—
vision in the cure of wilderness,
its profound herb, grown solitary.

Sonya Wohletz is a writer and poet living in the Pacific Northwest. Her first book of poetry, Bir Sıra Sonra/One Row After, was published by First Matter Press in 2022. Her second book is forthcoming with South Broadway Press.

26 weeks // Ashley Howell Bunn

September 13, 2025September 17, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

26 weeks

BY ASHLEY HOWELL BUNN

we will see it all
she whispers
as she pushes into my side
pressing flesh between fingers and wand
everything looks great

your femur appears from
the watery ink

Pause
click

prints an image for us to hold

how’s the pressure
I can’t decide if she means on my belly
or in my heart
as the air I breathe moves to your blood
you emerge sideways
ghostlike from my bloody shore

here’s the aortic arch
she speaks to her student
who I have allowed in the room
to view all that I hold inside

look at those ovaries, beautiful
I see only shadows
sunken faces
then your profile:,
elf-like, angelic
sagittal view
split in half

like when you arrived
like every moment since
split between two selves

the wand moves again
and you sink
into black water

Ashley Howell Bunn (she/they) completed her MFA in poetry through Regis University and holds a MA in Literature from Northwestern University. Their work has appeared in many places both in print and online. Their first chapbook, in coming light, was published in 2022 by Middle Creek Publishing and their second chapbook, Living Amends—coauthored with Alexander Shalom Joseph, is forthcoming through Galileo Press . Their work has been supported by Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Sundress Publications. She is an adjunct instructor of English at the Community College of Denver and the Youth Program Coordinator at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She is a certified somatic coach and yoga guide, and she offers somatic writing workshops in-person and virtually. When she isn’t writing, she is practicing yoga, running in the sunshine, playing with her kids, or daydreaming and staring off into space.

2025 Best of the Net Nominations

July 15, 2025July 14, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

We are incredibly excited to announce South Broadway Press‘ 2025 Best of the Net nominations! Please join us in celebrating these wonderful poets.

The Best of the Net is an annual anthology that honors small press literature that was first published online. The anthology is published by Sundress Publications and is open to submissions for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Best of the Net Nominees

BY ASPEN EVERETT

Editor Interviews // Tyler Hurula

July 12, 2025November 21, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Tyler Hurula (she/they) is the pinkest poet in Denver, Colorado. She strives to be the most queer and polyamorous person they can be. You’ll likely find her parading around in a tiara with hot pink lipstick going to an art walk or discussing the intricacies of the latest horror movie she’s watched with anyone who will listen. Author of chapbook Love Me Louder (Querencia Press) and Too Pretty for Plain Coffee (Wayfarer Books). They have been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes, and were a finalist for the Write Bloody 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Prize Contest.

If you are going to be anything in the world tonight, you better be lightning. You better find something in you honest enough to strike them.
Andrea Gibson

WHAT DOES THIS QUOTE MEAN TO YOU?

This quote is from a poem by Andrea Gibson called What Love Is and I think love is connection, and anything we do is ultimately about connection and love, and the way to do that is by being honest and vulnerable. When you show up in that way, all you can do is hope it resonates with the people you were meant to find.

WHAT BOOKS HAVE MADE AN IMPORTANT IMPACT ON YOU AND WHY?

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

This book is gorgeous. Vuong finds all of these beautiful truths in what it means to be human in the middle of so many things that are not beautiful. He gives himself the freedom to say what he needs to say and to be completely vulnerable by writing it for a mother who will never read it.

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

I love all things horror, and this was the first book I read by Tremblay. It is absolutely devastating and hopeful, and the only horror novel I’ve ever sobbed at the end of.

My Friends by Fredrick Backman

I am still in the middle of this book, but knew after the first page it would be one of my favorites. Backman is one of the most emotionally intelligent authors, and is able to encapsulate at the root what it means to be human, and how we all connect and relate to each other, even when we have completely different experiences.

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF WRITING AND ART IN THE CURRENT STATE OF THE WORLD?

I took a workshop with Patricia Smith awhile ago and she repeated a quote by someone and I can’t remember the exact quote or who it was originally from, but essentially it was something about when you’re looking for facts, go to the news, but when you’re looking for the truth of something, look to the poets. We have to create and connect with people. Art is how we navigate and contextualize the world. It is how we highlight the truths around us, how we find our human-ness in others, and how we are able to see the human-ness in others as reflected in their art—in how and what they create. In My Friends by Fredrick Backman, he says “art is what we leave of ourselves in other people” and in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong says “Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us?” I like to think that all of my poems are just asking “do you see me?” Art is one of the purest forms of connection, and without it, we have nothing.

HOW HAS WRITING AND ART HELPED TO FORM THE PERSON YOU ARE TODAY?

I grew up in an environment where there were so many secrets I was expected to keep, which led to a very lonely and isolating childhood and young adulthood. Through writing, I’ve been able to share those truths and surround myself with a community and people dedicated to practicing vulnerability and authenticity. I have grown into myself, and have learned to love the whole of myself through writing and art. It’s given me permission to feel all of the things, and be open to experiencing a multitude of truths from a multitude of people.

WHAT IS SOMETHING THAT MATTERS TO YOU?

Building community is so important to me. We simply cannot do this life on our own, and the more people and perspectives we surround ourselves with, the more capable we are to grow together and care for each other.

Cherry Picking in Washington D.C. | Amy Wray Irish

June 20, 2025June 20, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ 3 Comments

Cherry Picking in Washington D.C.

BY AMY WRAY IRISH



First, the cherry trees blossom, bursting open into 
skirted ballerinas filling the boulevard and the White 
House and the whole nation with pink and white 
petals (aren’t they pretty?) until their frills fall away
and they begin to swell, to reveal their pollination sin, 
forcing them to bear fruit

                        		                 far too soon. 
Young wombs chock full of false promises, bellies sick
on syrupy cherry-flavored stories poured down throats, 
forgetting the choke and force feeding of suffragettes 
by funnel and pretending to forget the funneling of dollars 
away from pre-natal planning and post-natal everything, 
easier to just shut up and take

 				                          whatever gets shoved in.
The options are a) poison or b) bitter dregs so they swallow
and say that it’s sweet but how would they know a good taste 
in their mouth the truth on their lips

 				                          if they’ve only been fed lies.
They don’t know someone cherry picked their words 
and their world. They unknowingly devoured each unripe 
soundbite and even ate the pit believing they were blessed 
and precious and special, told they were so pretty and so
holy, not knowing it was only so they would pick right 
at the polls

               			                  then be easily pushed aside. 
Drooping and forgotten, the poor little flowers are falling
from the pedestal, dropping from labor and lactation and loss
of blood, wilted from so much “women’s work” squeezed 
from their failing bodies, bound now to the bed 
they made, unable to pick up their broken pieces 
to start over or escape 
                                                  
 				                          but hey, 
remember how they were pretty, once?

Amy Wray Irish (she/her) believes poetry’s job is to be both brutally honest and eternally hopeful. Irish has two contest-winning chapbooks (Down to the Bone and Breathing Fire) and numerous other publications. Her work is forthcoming in the 40West Anthology, and the 2026 We’Moon Daily Calendar. Read more of her work at www.amywrayirish.com.

Three Poems / Tres Poemas | Guillermo Lazo

June 20, 2025June 21, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Night Train to Chicago

BY GUILLERMO LAZO

Let’s get off at Osceola
And grab our coonskin caps, boys.
Forgetting the farmer’s fields
And head for the wild patch of land
In the corner of yon field
And flatten our bodies
Against the ground
Filling our nostrils with
The smell of black Iowa dirt
Near the Des Moines River.

Let’s shoot an azimuth of 270 degrees
Due west and head westward
Past the lank, slank
Cowboy towns of Durango
Or what’s left of Neal’s
Larimer Street.
Let’s even taste that black
Dirt ‘til it feeds
The red bones in us and
We’re moving like Natty Bumpo
As coyotes at the edge of town.

La Otra

BY GUILLERMO LAZO

Tú eres la tranquilidad
En mi cerebro ruidoso
Y por tú cara
Puedo ver el rostro del universo
El universo es el cosmos
Es lo que hace nuestro mundo posible
Qué hace tú posible
Hoy es muy intempestivo
de integrar nuestra materia
en una canción de existencia
como la lluvia en la arena
qué hace tú posible

Kynthos

BY GUILLERMO LAZO

On a gravelly road in Germany
In the early morning light
I write the name of my beloved
In the dirt
With the toe of my combat boot
As I pull guard
Her perfumed card
Calls me
From the Rocky Mountains westward
Half a world away
As I stand guard
Over 37 years of topsoil
In the early morning light

She is the Greeks to me
She is Kynthos – Diana
Protectress of the wild young
Purveyor of knowledge
And she is America
With real wilderness
And rawboned hands and puritanical ethic
And miles and miles of endless onset.

Guillermo Lazo was born and raised in Chicago. Univ of Illinois BA Ed 1974. Univ of Colorado BA Literature 1986. Editor and Publisher of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal of the Arts (Poetry Magazine 1978-1984). Author of Surround Me As Burlap (Pueblo Poetry Project 1980 Pueblo, CO), Ching Poems (March Abrazo Press, Carlos Cumpian ed.), Bathers of the Med Sea (1989 Baculite Publishing – Canadian Printing). Articles: Confessions of a Marrano (Halapid Magazine Anousim Society of Crypto Jews 2001).

Three Poems | Joseph Wilcox

June 20, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Assimilation

BY JOSEPH WILCOX

i destroy myself
with a slow grind
pressing my body against
the bitter wheel at any sign
of sharp success
polishing away the burrs
of hope and joy until
i am pebble
forgotten
in the crush of boots

Passion

BY JOSEPH WILCOX

at easter brunch
as we douse the bulge
of egg casserole
and sweetbread
in our stomachs
with fresh hot coffee
like a post-coital cigarette
my brother
extolls the virtues
of the stock market
how he cheers
the ups and downs
as he buys
low
and his millions
grow
he pauses
righteousness rising
to rail
at the cross
of his tax burden
the unconstitutional waste
of government taking
his money
and the onus
of minimum wage
that shrouds his body corporate
to my sister
who earns $15
an hour
retail

Factious

BY JOSEPH WILCOX

don’t you see?
if we are fighting each other
we are not fighting them
if we are fighting each other
we won’t go to the shed
to find our pitchforks

would you like to borrow
one of mine, friend?

Joseph Wilcox studied at the Jack Kerouac School, started a theater company, and raised a family in Colorado. He lives in Aurora where he writes science fiction and fantasy, and poetry in the sleepless hours of the night.

Kneading Dough | Mimi Khoso

June 18, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment

Kneading Dough

BY MIMI KHOSO

We’re gathered here in this sacred place
Darting looks of judgement and envy
You still manage to pull a sour face
As the imam gives the khutba about how to love thy neighbor
I look down at their feet, calloused but not withered
It’s as if I can read their lives from their feet

Every untrimmed nail and hard blue vein
Running after children
No time to thrive, only maintain
Resilient, despite the shock of motherhood
Dressed in burnt orange Salwar Kameez and glass gold bangles
The baby coos and gurgles until the azan comes
Then its shrill cries and a burst of tears
How dare their mother do something for herself?
Religious commitments don’t end
Such tribulations only make them more clear

Babies, an extension of their mother until around age four
Then one day their need for cuddles suddenly ends
And the only remembrance is saggy pillows and stretch marks
Designed like directions on a map

Despite the sleepless nights and loss of time
Soon the baby discovers their own independence
He sits nicely as his mother prays sunnah
He fixes his own hat when it falls
Like kneading dough, she forms to the chapter of her life
Her tests become her triumphs, her loss is what she gained

I make a dua after Jummah, thanking God for His preference
The little things I cherish, take the good with the bad
How can you appreciate God’s gifts?
If it’s honey all the time
Sometimes we have to feel the sting

Mimi Khoso is not great at short biographies, and the pressure it causes to make an appealing impression in short summary. She does understand the need for it however; she was born in Georgia in 2002, and has moved all over Georgia and Texas during her childhood. She doesn’t have any professional credentials for writing poetry. She believes that once you discover your passion it gives meaning to your life. Her favorite book is The Beguiled by Thomas P. Cullinan and her favorite song is Saanson Ki Maala, based on the 16th-century poem by Mirabai then popularized by sufi singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. She has realized what makes celebrated films and timeless music profound is in its words. One of the great pleasures in her life is reading and writing and she is not fully able to explain why. When she converted to Islam over four years ago, she read of its deniers claiming the Quran to merely be a great work of poetry. To that, God responded to produce a verse similar to His if you can.

Grief As An Orange | Lydia Ford

June 18, 2025 ~ South Broadway Press ~ 1 Comment

Grief As An Orange

BY LYDIA FORD

An orange rind peeled
in one swift ribbon,

white veins of pith
snaked around

ripened grief offering.
Glinting, a little sun

in the center of the bowl,
a still life for a still life,

reflecting sweet and sour gem,
blinding, squinting at the fruit of it,

glistens a warm memory,
juice weeping between the fingers

A pucker, confetti of pulp in the belly.
Bloated with remedial fullness.

Lydia Ford is a poet based in Colorado, where she lives with her boyfriend and two cats, Melon and Zuko. Her work has been published in Words Dance Magazine, Ink & Marrow, boats against the current, Beyond Words Magazine and wildscape lit. You can often find her in her local coffee shop, probably telling someone about the music playing overhead or her love of nostalgia. More of her work lives on Instagram @lydfordwrites