I find comfort in stillness
when blades kiss my skin
and thundered tongues
hail down my name.
In the grey,
I close my eyes—
and let the rain mourn
me.
Latoya Wilkinson is 20 years old. She is currently a rising Senior at the University At Albany, studying Journalism and English. She doesn’t have any intentions of being a poet, but she took two poetry classes and realized that she would much rather write than breathe—and that says a lot.
I passed it unawares, others fallen, rotting
with perfume pervasive as the gnats
forming my halo and feasting delicately
on the membranes of my ears and eyes.
I knew the yew had metaphorical heft,
but failed to remember the sources.
Nowadays memory fails faster than legs
which also begin to falter halfway.
Nothing prepares you for death—
isn’t quite true. We know in our bones
that shadow from the hill will only
lengthen as the day wears on.
Yew, I never knew you in your glory,
having never walked these woods.
But is it a crime to feel no sadness
for a tree that perished naturally?
I walk toward a clearing, heavy
in my heart and heavier-legged
as I seek something more than
communion with a natural death.
Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet and storyteller. His work appears in a number of print and online journals.
I have watched the figs
ripen for centuries
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.
the chosen people
god’s blessed
people
brutalized attacked and slandered
beaten throughout centuries
wandering through
a mist of sorrow
through world wars
through a cemetery
the size of the Sea of Reeds
then blessed by God
and nations and given
back their homeland
holy land
returned to Zion
oh Israel oh holy land
oh El Elohe Yisrael
oh The Mighty One
God of Israel
how terrifying you’ve become
how brutal your power how punishing
your vengeance how bloody your hands
you’ve let loose
the leash of the angels
of the apocalypse
upon your neighbors
and upon their land
God’s hell has risen
now the broken people
now the occupied
the scattered descendants
of the conquered bombed
to dust their hospitals
their places of worship
their schools their people
their children their lineage
their line of hope obliterated
in the constant barrage
of revenge
only the law of God
matters El Elohe Yisrael
only the law of Israel
above the laws of men
of war of nations
above the internationals
from above comes the law
from above the blessing
of violations of wanton cruelty
from above the blessings
of starvation the blessings
of suffering the blessings
of obliteration of the grave
of the dark
terror begets terror begets terror
begets the horror show begets
infinite suffering a sea of tears
a grand canyon of corpses
for your neighbors
not mercy but broken bones
not compassion but severed bodies
for your neighbors there is no salt
no bread no wine but disease
starvation and poisoned water
oh Palestine the world watches
and not much is done and what is
done seems as spit into the wind
as spit on to the face of Palestine
Palestine no mother’s day
Palestine no fourth of July
Palestine no apple pie
no answers from Salat no call from God
no response from the deepening chorus
of mourning echoing out toward Mecca
and bouncing off the Kaaba
Ted Vaca is a Denver area based poet and performer. He began writing steadily in the late 1980’s in his home state of California. He has been published in numerous publications and has self-published two chapbooks. He is a member of the 1995 Asheville National Slam Poetry Championship team. He is a founding member of The Mercury Cafe Poetry Slam, (Denver, CO.) established in 2000, and ongoing since then. He is the coach of the 2006 Mercury Cafe Slam Championship team. He has hosted countless poetry readings and slams and special events throughout his 35-plus years in catering toward poetic pursuits.
Ted is an award winner of Colorado’s Lulu award for accomplishments in poetry and The James Ryan Morris Tombstone award.
Ted has worked for Art from Ashes, a Colorado based not for profit that encourages and teaches healing through art therapy, catering to youth in illness and at risk.
Image: Saad Chaudhry
Firmament
My boss asks me to watch 16 hours
of camera footage. Instead I watch dandelions
lose their heads at the slightest breeze. Nearby weeds
shed their mustard petals. The sky dares me
to name its every shade of blue. Cotton, Chromium,
Seafoam, Tremor. There are more
important things to worry about today than work,
like breathing the grass-cut air, catching
the sun’s bright spears. The swollen clouds are
an army of angel wings descending.
I watch their feathers fall.
Eric Raanan Fischman is an MFA graduate of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He has taught free writing workshops in Nederland, Boulder, and Longmont, Colorado, and has had work in Bombay Gin, Boulder Weekly, Suspect Press, and many more, as well as in local community fundraising anthologies from Punch Drunk Press and South Broadway Ghost Society. He also curates the Boulder/Denver metro area poetry calendar at boulderpoetryscene.com and is a regular contributor to the BPS blog. His first book, “Mordy Gets Enlightened,” was published through The Little Door in 2017.
Image: Denny Müller
The Tyrant Smells Decay
Stop seeking a reality
Neither sound nor trace
Relieve empty scavengers
Of chemical spills and
Luxury boats
The sharks have nothing left to chew
This ferry is optimistic
When the world ends
You’ll get there anyway
Fingers work a video game
Of delusional fuckers
And farmers markets
A terrible Frankenstein
A real piece of living art
Roll and pitch master
You’ll be happy
Building a terrible thing
This is a found poem from Grant, Mira. Symbiont. New York. Orbit, 2014. Print. Pages 444-472.
Jen MacBain-Stephens (she/her) went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in Iowa where she is landlocked. Her fifth, full length poetry collection, “Pool Parties” is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2023. She is also the author of fifteen chapbooks. Some of her work appears in The Pinch, Kestrel, Cleaver, Dream Pop, Slant, Yalobusha Review, and Grist. She is the director of the monthly reading series Today You are Perfect, sponsored by the non-profit Iowa City Poetry. Find her online at http://jennifermacbainstephens.com/.
Image: Nathanaël Desmeules
Full Moon Reflecting off the Peaks
As snow does to a fire
gods who bit flowers of ink
a nest of mad kisses down the long black river
the milky way sky’s pale vertebrae
archipelagos of stars
framed between small branches
blossoms of small arms , nails us naked to the color
of pink hyacinth singing singing
in deep red ripples
your voice is a pale street lamp on calm black water
just (a word planted by the water
before I am a stone in a stone-swallowing river
thrown
into
sleep
————————————————– your eyes
Donnie Hollingsworth has lived in many small Rocky Mountain towns and currently resides in Lamar, Colorado–where he teaches Art and English at the local community college–with his wife, cat, and dog. His art can be found here.
Image: Eduardo Soares
Toads in Bermuda
Only one cashier at the Giant Eagle today.
I’m stuck in aisle 7 that begins
with broth, stock, and soup
and ends with canned vegetables.
I stare at a can of Jolly Green Giant green beans
and wonder if, at 72, I’ll live long enough
to get to the beef broth, much less to Amber,
the patient and weary checkout lady.
Everyone fiddles with their phones. I pull
mine out and say to the young couple
behind me that I’m calling my attorney because
I want to make out my will. They egg
me on with laughter. Let’s gather kindling, I say,
make a fire, roast s’mores, sing Kumbaya.
We’re bonding, I say, and they laugh some more—
laugh at the old coot in aisle 7 near the veggies.
Earlier, at the deli, a sign reads, “Everyone’s having
trouble getting workers. Be kind to the ones
that showed up.” A man behind the counter says,
“Can I help you?” “Is that a Boston accent
I hear?” I ask. “Actually,” he says, “I’m English.
Been in Pittsburgh for forty years.” I learn
that if you’re from England and live in Pittsburgh for
forty years, you sound like you’re from Boston.
Later, in the grossly understaffed Post Office where
Janelle, the sweetest and most patient person
on the planet, is, as usual, the sole agent at the window,
a man in line behind me asks where the Express
Mail envelops are. “Is that an Australian accent I hear?”
I ask. “No,” he says, “I’m from Bermuda.”
“We used to vacation there when our son was little,”
I say. I tell him how Ari and I would go on
toad hunts at night, how the toads, of which there were
hundreds, would exude an hallucinogenic spray
when you picked them up. Once, when my wife asked
Ari how the toad hunt went he said, “That un-
conscionable toad peed on my daddy,” which was pretty
sophisticated for a five-year-old. In the morning
we’d find hundreds of toads flattened by mopeds the
locals drove. “There are hardly any toads left,”
the man from Bermuda says. “They’re going extinct
along with bees, bats, and frogs.” We stand
in silence for a few moments. Then he says, “We used
to have a joke about the toads.” “Tell me,”
I say. “Why does a toad in Bermuda cross the road?”
“Why?” I ask.
“To find his flat mate,” he says. We laugh about that.
Janelle laughs too.
Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Pinnacles of Hope (Impspired Books, 2022). His poetry has been nominated three times for both the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Salamander Ink Magazine, and elsewhere.
Dear Ecopoets, Poets, Environmentalists, the Lovers of Nature and Potential Defenders of the Future Wolves in Colorado,
Many thanks for coming out tonight to learn more about the process of reintroducing the grey wolf into Colorado.
Your input can change the current plan to reintroduce wolves in our state.
Two events happened in 2020, the worst year in human history that gave me hope, caused me joy and provided inspiration and they both had to do with wolves.
In April 2020, Brice Maiurro and Shelsea Ochoa went to their front yard in Denver at 8PM and howled like wolves at the moon and their neighbors howled back.
Soon, all of Colorado joined in. For many more days than I can count, I went outside at 8 PM and howled joining my neighbors and I didn’t feel alone. I felt like I belonged to a community and that Coloradoans cared about each other. I was powerful and healing. Howling like wolves in Colorado charmed the rest of the world and made the news worldwide.
In November 2020, we passed Proposition 114 to reintroduce an endangered species, the grey wolf, back into the Colorado wild. This process has also been watched around the world.
I was hopeful because Coloradoan passed that could rewrite the narrative of wolves in the New West and leave behind the Old West wolf history of extermination, demonization and blood lust for trophy hunting of wolves.
In addition, the passing of Proposition 114 was wonderful environmental news. We were swarming the news about climate change, the Sixth Extinction, and in our state battling climate-change fueled wildfire after wildfire. It was a relief to me that my state was going to welcome an endangered species and be on the cutting edge of new ways to think about the wild.
First, the new law mentioned the words endangered species, which meant no one could kill wolves. Second, this foundational sentence was written in this law: “Grey Wolf” means nongame wildlife of the species Canis Lupus. The law clearly states that there will be no hunting of wolves, and no killing of wolves in our state as the law passed included the words endangered species and non-game species.
Both of these events inspired me to begin research and write my next book of poems, The Wolf Dossier. One main part of this book is reporting on the process and was filled with hope that wolves would find
Fast forward December 2023.
.
The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission ( CPW) released the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Draft Plan includes both delisting grey wolves from the federal Endangered Species Act and the killing of wolves. The CPW Draft Plan includes three methods to kill wolves in Colorado: recreational hunting, lethal control, and issuing permits for ranchers to kill conflict wolves.
How can recreational hunting be possible when the gray wolf is protected by the federal Endangered Species Act? There is a process the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can use to delist any animal from the Endangered Species Act. The process is called the 10j rule, which gives states the power to manage any endangered species including wolves as they see fit.
That is why there are hunting wolf hunting seasons in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Wisconsin. These states decided on hunting as a wolf management tool. This past year Idaho passed a law to kill 90% of their wolves. Montana passed a law to kill 85% of their wolves. In Wisconsin, one third of their wolf population was killed in only 2 days of their first 2 week hunting season and they had to shut down their wolf hunting season early.
How can this be the future of wolves in our state?
CPW began the process to delist grey wolves in August 2022.
Proposition 114 defines wolves as a non-game species, which makes the hunting of wolves illegal. the current draft of CPW draft plan encourages non-lethal methods to control wolves, but does not require non-lethal methods as a the first line of defense against conflict wolves.
Under the CPW draft plan, hunting wolves will be permitted after 150 wolves live in Colorado for two years, or if the population grows to 400 wolves., whichever comes first. The draft plan calls for the 50 wolves to be reintroduced into our state over the next 3 to 5 years.
CPW proposes that 150 wolves will constitute a sustainable Colorado wolf population. This number relies on an outdated environmental analysis from 1994. Current science reports Colorado’s sustainable wolf population should be 750 wolves.
Ranchers are concerned wolves will kill their livestock. According to USDA statistics, wolves kill 0.009 percent of the livestock in the United States annually. Coloradoans voted to compensate ranchers for all livestock losses due to wolves.
Outfitters and hunters are worried wolves will cause a serious decline of the elk population. An eleven-year study in Montana of the elk in counties with wolf populations commissioned by the governor of Montana found no decline in the elk population.
Proposition 114 requires the CPW to listen ideas proposed by voters at public meetings and make changes before the plan to reintroduce wolves to Colorado is finalized.
Please note the word Draft.
I talked with the director of the Colorado Wolf Project on Monday Feb.13th. Many wolf advocates have been making public comment and he says the CPW is listening.
MAKE A PUBLIC COMMENT
Public Comment ends Feb. 22nd
Colorado Parks and Wildlife is required to revise the Colorado wolf reintroduction plan based on public comment.
From the Office of Governor: Colorado Governor Jared Polis calls on the CPW to solicit and incorporate feedback from the public for the wolf reintroduction plan
“Governor Polis supports CPW’s ongoing work to develop a quality plan, including its extensive efforts to solicit and incorporate feedback from the public prior to finalizing that plan as long as it’s consistent with the law. Whenever the voters or the legislature enact a law, the Governor takes very seriously his responsibility to successfully implement it.”
—-Statement from the Office of Governor Jared Polis
PUBLIC COMMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Today until public comment ends on Feb.22nd. Make your opinion known on the CPW website.
Today until public comment ends on Feb. 22nd. Write the CPW Commissioners directly.
On Feb. 22, attend the last CPW public meeting in Denver to show your support for wolves.
CPW Headquarters
Hunter Education Building
6060 Broadway
Denver, CO
8:30am – 3:00pm, (Subject to change)
Share this information with friends and family. Ask them to make public comment of the CPW website and to share what may happen to Colorado wolves with others.
The CPW Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan is Available Here
“Others countered the (CPW appointed) advisory group was stacked with pro-ranching and pro-hunting members. They say that resulted in a plan that is tilted more toward allowing the killing of wolves instead of allowing the predator to establish its numbers in the state.”
Watch the CPW Commissioners Meetings on YouTube
OVER 3.4 MILLION PEOPLE WATCHED THE COLORADO PARKS AND WILDLIFE (CPW) WILDLIFE COMMISSIONERS WOLF REINTRODUCTION DRAFT PLAN ON THE CPW COMMISSIONERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Watch the CPW Meetings here:
Colorado Springs
Jan, 19th
Gunnison
Jan. 25th
This organization has been working for years on behalf of the wolves. Their website is incredible with lots of information on wolves in the Rockies. They have been in the forefront on behalf of wolves in the Proposition 114 process. Check out their website.
Darlene Kobobel, founder of the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center and member of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Stakeholders Advisory Group, has detailed information about the CPW Draft Plan to reintroduce wolves to Colorado and alternate ways to reintroduce wolves in a safe and environmentally sound way.
This information can be found in the January 2023 newsletter The Wolf Pack which can be found on The Colorado Wolf and Wildlife website.
Dear Readers: It is the 11th hour for the draft plan that is now in the hands of the CPW commissioners. As some of you are aware, I was a member of the SAG (Stakeholders Advisory Group) and my job was to bring diverse viewpoints to the group. After a long 18 months of meetings, we finally finished on October 2022. Our group consisted of individuals ranging from ranchers, trappers, and hunters; which compiled as the majority and a few that were pro-wolf. The draft was constructed of phases in developing a plan for the gray wolf reintroduction. There were 3 phases that we could live with and a Phase #4 that we could not. We walked away satisfied that we came to no consensus on Phase #4. See link for the complete draft plan.
Phase #4 is on page iii.. Unfortunately, It is interesting that somehow Phase #4 was put into this draft even after the SAG had recommended that it be tabled until a future time. Below and on the following page is the language of Phase #4.
WOLVES MAY BE RECLASSIFIED AS A GAME SPECIES
Phase 4 (Game species status): “Phase 4” refers to when the wolf may potentially be classified as a game species in the future. Phase 4 is not required under CRS 33-2-105.8. There is no population objective for wolves in this Plan. Long-term wolf management may include reclassification as a big game or furbearer species. Regulated public harvest of wolves by hunting during designated seasons is one tool that may help CPW manage wolf numbers and social acceptance of wolves upon delisting and reclassification as a game species.
Proposition #114 C.R.S. 33-2-105.8 precludes wolves as a non-game species. Recreational killing of wolves must not be considered in any future management scenario. hopefully be to show support by attending the upcoming meetings that will be held this month and next. I do know that thousands of support letters have been sent to the commissioners, however that may not be enough. I attended and spoke at the first public meeting on the January 19th meeting in Colorado Springs at Cheyenne Mountain Resort. I closed the Center down that day to have my entire staff attend, speak and show support for our wolves. I will be closing the Center again for the final meeting in Denver on February 22nd, 2023 so we can make another stand for what we believe in and for fairness to be amended in this final plan.
There are many things in this plan that are not wolf friendly if you glance though this draft, but our main concern is Phase #4. Most of this draft lays heavy on compensation for ranchers and lethal take of wolves with very little about conflict management and non-lethal tools. There are no incentives or any language stronger than it is “encouraged”. In addition to this is the small number of wolves that are projected to be reintroduced. We feel that there is not much consideration for things that could occur such as poaching, wolves getting hit by cars, hunting mortalities, mange and more.
Lastly, Phases 1 and 2 have these limited protections. In Phases 1 and 2, a limited duration permit for lethal take may be issued to a livestock owner or agent of the livestock owner on private or public land. A permit is required under state law (CRS 33-2-106.4). Non-lethal conflict mitigation measures will be considered prior to issuance of any lethal take permit. In Phase 3, the same permitting requirements exist. Further coordination with Colorado Department of Agriculture will be required as well per Colo. Rev. Stat. § 35-40-101(4).
I am reaching out because we worked so hard to have this historic event for the return of the Gray wolf to be upon Colorado’s landscape after over 80 years of being absent due to being exterminated and now we feel that we have to fight again just to keep them safe. I am asking for anyone who cares about wolves to help me help the wolves. Below is information where you can speak up for wolves. There are opportunities for people who live in Colorado and people who are out of state. For people who want to speak at the meetings and for people who can just show up and stand in solidarity. After February 22nd, we are done and it is out of our hands. The commissioners are the decision makers and the more people who can voice their thoughts in support, shows strength from the people. Just close your eyes and think of why you have a love in your heart for wolves. That is why you need to help protect them.
Darlene Kobobel
Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center
Gray wolves can bring about immensely positive ecological, economic and social opportunities for Coloradans. But these positive effects only occur when wolf family groups are intact and not disrupted by trophy hunting or lethal management.
Image: Quinton Coetzee
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
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.
south broadway press 
