Tag: boulder

Three Poems | Aimee Herman

~ South Broadway Ghost Society ~ 1 Comment
Image: Michal Matlon

removed

Trae sang Frank Sinatra to my left as the doctor removed a drain from my right.


I wasn’t ready to look down yet.  


Later, I apologized for the blood I leaked onto the paper, covering my doctor’s white leather chair.  


I’m sorry for my mess, I said, an apology with a footnote, of which the dissertation is still being written.  


With compression off for the first time in eight days, I assemble as much oxygen as I can.  I inhale 


the width of North America and exhale four decades in this body.  


My eyes unclench; they are not fists.  


The doctor praises my body, her work.  


You are an artist, Trae says to her.  


Slowly, I drop my head.  


My chest is my favorite book pulled open to the best part.  


It is flat, bruised. Nipples like squashed berries on the sidewalk, sort of charred and uncertain.  


I have survived this pain. And my new chest is  
                                                                                                                       beginning

a narrative therapy exhibition

part one.

Debra, my therapist, writes me a letter to prove medical necessity for bilateral mastectomy. I become  a card catalogue of mental distress, two disorders and a dysphoria. The letter calls me consistently  depressive; suddenly, I feel so seen. Why must we demonstrate our unwellness for health insurance  assistance when no man has to take a photograph of his flaccid penis in order to qualify for erection  renewal.

part two.

Strobe light images of sensations and feelings. My feminist hides, squinting every letter into a scared  pill bug. My body is a neighbor I wave hello to, with preference to keep our conversations no longer  than a nod. We pretend we are strangers; it is better this way. There was a time before I flinched. Before  I looked at men and thought about their penises as bullet holes left in women’s bodies. Before what I  wore became a billboard for who I was, how I identified, rather than just cotton and comfort. Before  my dentist declared all the reasons my teeth were complicated derelicts: drugs, lack of flossing, all  those panic attacks and New Jersey water. Before my body had scars named after the men, named  after the meds, named after me. Before that HPV diagnosis. Before that colposcopy where my  girlfriend and I watched my cervix projected on a screen as though it were the star of a new sitcom  about genital warts and bad decisions. Before my body became a crime scene or the DSM-5 or a chalk  outline of a former life or a tear-soaked handkerchief or a protest poem or a ghost or a  misunderstanding 

or a question mark.

footnote

It comes back. It threads itself into the thin skin of my eyelids, jackhammers itself against my chest,  creeps into the wax in my ears. It has been cut out, but it comes back. It has been drowned out with  liquor and hops, but it swims to shore. It has been numbed with powders, chemicals, pickpocketed  medicine cabinets; it keeps waking back up. It. It is genetic. It is unruly, unpredictable. It does not care  you do yoga now or pretend to meditate. It has no interest in what you call yourself now, how you  (try to) see yourself now. It is not going away. It. It stops you from getting jobs, from believing in  yourself, from maintaining friendships, from committing to most things. It starts fights. It. It carries  a switchblade. It. It cannot be quieted by pharmaceuticals; in fact, it dares you to try that again. It does  not cower under doctor’s orders. It hates the term self-care. It is the most persistent part of you. It is  the one element of you that has not given up. It. It. It has locked your doors and windows, so forget  trying to walk out. It reminds you (in case you have forgotten) how worthless you are. It. It expects  nothing of you. It. It. It. It is immune to surgery and sermons. It may will never go away. It. It. It. It.  It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It. It.

Aimee Herman is a queer, nonbinary educator and writer. They are the author of two books of poetry and the novel “Everything Grows”. In addition, their work can be found in journals and anthologies such as BOMB, cream city review, and “Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics“. They currently host a monthly open mic in Boulder called Queer Art Organics. Aimee is extremely enamored with libraries, ukuleles, and the moon.

reasons for raisins | Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

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Image: Andreas Haslinger

reasons for raisins (6)

tell me you know something
of the love lost on grapes
of skin peeled away
very carefully
and while eating the grapes
skinned and exposed
for what they really are
think of those of us who crave them
who want only to eat them
again
and again
and again
who want only to hold them
to save them for another day
to do the very human
thing and change them
into raisins or wine

reasons for raisins (7)

call it age if you like
or experience or maturity
just as wine matures with age
or call it a step in the cycle
through which all living
things must pass
in order to survive as
humans we believe
in the pleasures of life
this is why we eat grapes
or drink wine
or plant such seeds
and as humans we ultimately
mature so as to provide for
ourselves and the ones we love
this is why we must grow old
so it is also with grapes

reasons for raisins (13)

here are the ones
that got away the ones
so cocksure and cool the ones
who ran so electric
as they slipped under the
stove the refrigerator and the sink
how sad they all seem now
cloistered in the corner dust

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers is a poet, writer, photographer, and publisher. He is the publisher and editor of Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal.

Floor Bare | Jessica Rigney

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Image: Tim Huefner

Floor Bare

And here you are standing
two feet bare on the floor of
your kitchen turning back
to the wall behind as though
he were standing bare-footed there
with you again as he did
those years prior. Before
the days dissolved into the rising
of time immemorial and you
who had just kept your head
above water now live
in the after so far below you have
come to know the nocturnal
creatures who in quiet habits roam
from shore to shore only under
all the weight of dark stars.
What can you do but let
flow through your fingers—the now
and him too though he was yours
for a time and gave you
such happiness.
The distances between
keep widening and soon it will be
that you cannot recall his eyes
or the scent amongst his thick curls.
Turns out you knew—had known
all along this was coming. It was why
you held him close for so long
why you saved him in dreams
so many times you lost count. It was
the one sure thing you held
in your heart and though you knew
it to be true you gave him
everything even so—even though
you knew in the coming years
he would be gone from you.
And here you are standing
two feet bare on the floor of
your kitchen turning back
to the wall behind you as though
he were standing bare-footed there.

Jessica Rigney is a poet, artist, and filmmaker. She is the author of Follow a Field: a Photographic & Poetic Essay (2016), Entre Nous (2017), Careful Packages (2019), and Something Whole (2021). Her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022. She lives and wanders in Colorado and northern New Mexico, where she films and collects feathers and stones. www.jessicarigney.com

This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, 
Dwell: Poems About Home. Purchase here.

strange, what fabric the body can be | Jade Lascelles

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Image: 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič

strange, what fabric the body can be

the materiality, texture layered atop itself

bristling old wool shorn and barbed from so much wear. knitted with cheap

yarn, the acrylic kind that tightens too much, squeaks after

time and so many washes. a thick polyester clinging to the body

odor of the great aunt who first wore it. a light chiffon scarf

draped, artful but nonchalant. a coat patched too obviously.

stinking of the mothballs from a long-untouched winter closet.

how you are sewn into it


how you drive around a town you have not lived in for fifteen years. the

streets so foreign for the first few days. you, without clear compass or

signpost. home, a place of now-unfamiliar intersections. until on the

third day you feel a strange tug. a too-tight stitch pulling beneath the

muscles in your chest. a breath caught in the button of your throat.

because you suddenly know these storefronts, just with different

names. because you remember the shape and weight of who still

patterns the pavement below. who forever married a part of you to

this neighborhood. whose cord has been knotted to yours all along. you

have driven frightfully close to where something terrible happened. until

now you forgot the event even took place in a house at all. it existing

all this time only in the unnamable space of your hazy recollections.


and the stains it collects, the memory


every time you put on the shirt, your eyes go right to the small spot of

redness. you know the exact meal you were eating. how you were sitting at

a not proper dining space. how the sauce splashed when the pot boiled

over. how her homemade jam was thinner and dripped more. when the

brown corduroy got that conspicuous patch of dried glue along the front

most thigh. the leaking pen. the accident. the accidental. that which

you pick at and sniff at and rub in and soak with hopes of it fading more.


how you wear it, but also, how you are woven of it

you sense the distinct tastes inside your mouth whenever you look at the

photo. it is almost unbelievable now, teaching kindergartners to cook.

trusting such small and wild hands with knives to chop the radishes, a hot

griddle to fry up tortillas. you made butter as a class, taking turns shaking

the mason jar of cream. the excited aggression you all stifled around pet gerbils

and younger siblings having found an escape. a riot of children given task

and purpose for their agitation. you hold a photo of this day, see your own

smile as you chew a bit of buttered bread. see how you once delighted

so in it. how delicious it could be, the violence of so many hands.

Jade Lascelles is a writer, editor, musician, and letterpress printer based in Boulder, Colorado. She is the author of the full-length collection The Invevitable (Gesture Press, 2021). Selections of her work have also appeared in numerous journals and the anthologies Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism and Precipice: Writing at the Edge, as well as being featured in the Ed Bowes film Gold Hill and the visual art exhibit and accompanying book Shame Radiant. Several of her poems were recently translated into Italian for the journal Le Voci della Luna. Beyond her writing endeavors, she is a longtime steward of the Harry Smith Print Shop at Naropa University, a core member of the art group The Wilds, and plays drums in a few different musical projects.

This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, Dwell: Poems About Home. Purchase here.

Ripe Apples – Jessica Rigney

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Photo: Oxa Roxa

You make of me a magician—
a laborer supplicant and servant
as I bring the corners of the cloth

together and know you see—
know of your marveling at my hands and
how they come together. It is I

who fashions a new heart each morning
awake to ripe apples which appear
inside the curve of my arm as though

I’d gathered them in my sleep.
Reveries write themselves upon the day
I say. Prefiguring every kindness falling

at my feet. By night they are siphon
for the sorrow tonguing my boots.
You make of me a witness—

stalwart bearer of deprivations
of sleep as I peel carrots at midnight
and know your eyes follow the line

of my shoulder to elbow to wrist and
how they work together still. It is you
who with your arms unloosening

‘round the waste of me lost beyond
these endless unnamed days—you
who magics the seasons back from before

the stay.
Name not I, but the it which is this.
I say.

Jessica Rigney is a poet, artist, and filmmaker. She is poetjess on Instagram.

This poem is from the Thought For Food anthology,
a poetry collection benefiting Denver Food Rescue.
You can purchase a copy of the book here.

Thought For Food Promotional 1

The Alley Poets – Chelsea Cook

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1
Photo: Joshua Hoehne

Let me show you

Where the poets live.

They gather in an alley, at midnight, under the full moon,

To read dirty haiku and make a ruckus in the streets.

 

Rebels!

But they are caring rebels.

 

Tonight, I found the alley poets

And took a dose of love.

How are you feeling? they ask.

Good, I say.

(Good is always the right answer, the work answer.)

No, tell us how you really feel.

Depressed.

That’s better, because it’s honest. Now come here:

“Every day, we’ll show you a moment so golden you must close your eyes to see it.”

I must stick around for that day.

 

Why is death such a theme in poetry?

Why does the depressed mind latch onto it,

Instead of the beauty in the words, the rhymes, the repetition?

Why is it so easy for pain to enter,

For negative feelings to take root like weeds,

For the analytical mind to try and rationalize the irrational?

 

The alley poets tell me a ghost story:

About the monster “that which follows”!

Stalking the cities, the towns, the towers

For those souls whose hearts have turned to stone.

It is insatiable, all-consuming, leaving destruction in its wake.

But they also tell me:

“That which follows” hates fire, warmth, light, love.

 

So, the alley poets light a campfire.

We sing and dance and read,

Keeping the darkness at bay.

Not to sound cliché

But the poems they recite,

Are the stars between the clouds at night.

 

They hug me tightly as I take my leave,

Encouraging: I must carry the ember until the next time

The community comes together.

The upbeat music starts to play,

Because…”that which follows” has no chance

Against the alley poets!

 

Chelsea Cook grew up on the coast of Virginia, but now calls the mountains of Colorado home. She has been writing poetry since high school, and has been active in the Boulder open mic scene. She is currently finishing the draft of her first novel.

 

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.

Thought For Food Promotional 1

It’s Not Polite to Stare at Body Autonomy – Shawnie Hamer

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macro 5
Photo: Josh Newton

  1. Body Autonomy sits next to M & I at a bar named Vesuvius. The kind of place people sit facing north, & maybe each other when the weather is right. Josie the bartender is chatting up a couple a few stools down, shows them a video of Johnny Marr playing a Clash cover to her in Los Angeles. “You are very magnetic,” M says. Josie free-pours silver tequila into cold glasses, says “I know.” Body asks for a remote to the tired TV, flips through channels, mumbles mention of the news headline, a mother pleading for assistance in finding her 17-year-old son, who left in the night to a city she can’t quite name or find on a map. “The heart leaves when we don’t make a home for it,” he whispers into his whiskey lemonade. I don’t feel the need to leave.

    …

    …..

  2. M & I stop to stretch our legs in a tiny town named Big Sur but isn’t actually named Big Sur. A town of stasis, of pausing movement while inertia presses forward in form of rented RV & restless toddlers. A town built on trinkets & organic oils & overpriced rooms. I light a smoke, stretch— one in the same, these days— M snaps analog photos of flowers that sway palm tree green. Body walks by in overalls & combat boots, long blonde hair. She places time-worn lips together into red highway line, hums, “Yummmmmmmm. You don’t see enough people smoking these days.” Swings her bag of chips like a little sis as she continues seaside.

    …

    …….

  3. My parents haven’t seen Body in years. Met them once at a corner on Baker Street. In aisle 5 shopping for Frosted Flakes. A sticky interaction, one worn like memory, like cut-off jean jacket hiding in the back of the closet. When M & I leave for Highway 1, they feel the grief. Miss Body, wish their children could have seen the swag of their grin, heard the sharp cuts of Body’s laugh. They want to tell us these things, want to postpone the distance, but say “Be careful” instead.

    …

    ……..

  4. M & I stop for gas in North Lake Tahoe. We barely make the sunset, water lava-lamp-like, holding ground as we stumble over twigs & tired feet to catch a glimpse. We find the cheapest gas in town, only two options. Fill the tank slowly. A busted black Corolla drives in slowly. The teen boys inside open the door, speak slowly. Say, “Hey! Slow down, baby.” M & I move quickly. Body watches from the next pump, filling up his baby blue Bronco. Shakes his head slowly, says nothing.

    …
    ………..

  5. Body agrees that being locked in a car-sized cage & being licked by Kevin Spacey for a year is better than living out every “would you rather” scenario in alternate dimensions, but not by much.

    …
    ……

  6. M & I stay with our friend L in San Francisco. L takes us to their neighborhood bar. Tells us the first time they really felt their legs was when they took rose-oil-infused-ketamine with Queens at a Pride party. Body sings “We Are the Champions” with the karaoke DJ as we take boomerang videos of our apricot beers clinking.

    …
    ……….

  7. M, L, & I talk numbers, how they follow us. M says 5 is her favorite, a sign of luck when she drives the 12 hours from Minnesota to Denver, & then back again. L says seeing 22, 23, & 24 before their 28th birthday lets them know when to leave someone behind. I have an affinity for 32, my first jersey when I was 9. Tell them about the time K told me about my palm. Told me that I’d meet Body when I was 32. Said, “This uncertainty will be gone at 32.” Body passes us on the sidewalk, crosses south to head down Hyde. We head east, back to the car before the meter runs out at 12:45.

    …

    For Marie, who played 1,632 games of Would-You-Rather with me while we remembered Body’s face. 

…….

Author Photo

Shawnie Hamer was born in the heat & dust of Bakersfield, CA. Her first book, the stove is off at home (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) is an experimental art & poetry book curated through a community ritual which focused on the identification & exorcism of trauma. Hamer is the founder of collective.aporia, & a co-conspirator of the off.collective. Her poetry can be found in publications such as Bombay Gin, Tooth n Nail: practical advice from and for the everywoman, The Birds We Piled Loosely, SWP Guerrilla Lit Mag, & Tiny Spoon Lit Mag. She is currently living & creating in France.

 

three poems – jessica rigney

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AdrianHMolina-150x150

All These Open Fields

He sits legs under

a curl of the known

up against

the unknown.

She is wandering

away again

as she speaks

as she finds

the strand

which allows itself

to tangle between

his toes. And he is

bouncing his foot

to her story because

he imagines her

in the story

as she tells it

tries to come

to terms. What

terms he does not

know. And she can tell

it makes him

uncomfortable—

all these open fields

where she is running

but still. She flexes

her wings as though

they had been folded

too long in the cold.

But now that the heat

is upon them both his leg

moves rapidly and her

shoulder blades hold

the beat and she is still

speaking and he refuses

to speak. And the unknown

sits up between them and

relaxes itself as a lazy cat

would across a table

in the heat of the sun

middle of winter when

there is no chance

of kicking him off

simply to set down

a fresh cup of coffee

put your feet up and

enjoy a goddamn

cigarette.

SBGS December

Fall Through

If you were to let your eyes fall

upon black panes of a night window—

to stay—resting there where air swells

soundless. You would be lost.

.

And so she turns from the window

makes her face open to me now—

Says—I no longer hope for this ache

to end.

I turned my body to him

without expectation. Spoke as though

I’d come from the woods—

A single afternoon.

Long between the banks of a river

whose name I’ve never known.

He rose to greet me without rush—no never

a rush in the world for his breath at my neck.

Solid hands each side of my face. She says.

She tells me about the day she lay her body

across his lap and let herself be held close.

Close-pulled-in by a mouth by arms a body

to bring her into herself.

She looks up to my eyes resting openly

upon her mouth mouthing the words—

I have no idea how to have mercy for my own life.

.

How the fathomless black

remains flat against the glass

is of no consequence

save for our wonder of it.

I gave myself—inexplicably to him.

That winter and all those to follow never mind the risk.

Though I would not set fire to the home I’d built

no matter the torments. Would you? She asks.

Her sweetly softened eyes widen as the deer’s.

Head lifted ears cocked in observance.

A gentle shift of hooves in the undergrowth.

The decades have made her careful—

clever—so very beautiful.

If you were handed your life

loosed of its bridle suddenly

and without remorse?

.

How long before you could.

Name it.

SBGS December

Green Leaves Dropped

Out the window from a small
Room where we are all breathing

Willows sway but do not want
More than a willingness to sway.

In the space of a gathered wish we are
All wishing not to suffer. Yet if we knew

What it would mean to move through
We would. We would ask for a firefly’s

Last light. We would ask the growing world
To make its chance for meaning. We would ask

For agony. We would ask for endurance.
You walk the street of your childhood

And say the trees have not greened
As they should. And those that did dropped

Their leaves ‘neath an early frost and did not
Have a chance. And is this what we have now

To look forward to? Is this what is meant
You ask, by changing weather?

There is a world we do not know yet.
There is a world without and we have not

Yet known it. There is a world with everything
And that too we have not known.

Rigney_Jessica Author Pic
Jessica Rigney is a poet, artist, and filmmaker. She is twice a a quarter-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry (2016 & 18.) Find her letterpress broadsides at Wolverine Farm Publishing. Consume more of her work at Salomé and Cider Press Review. She is poetjess on Instagram.

a hawk cries katsu – john haworth

~ South Broadway Ghost Society ~ 1 Comment

art

I tried to write this poem on a typewriter.
The typewriter must be broken.
A blank page eats my fingertips.
I keep hammering space,
the only key still barely functioning,
until more and more blank pages
stare me in the face,
contemplating
the taste of my tongue.
I would throw it all out the window
if it weren’t for pigeons
bearing psalms of peace and vanity.
Over my shoulder
Robert Bly sits at a council fire
jacking off the ghost
of his younger self
while screaming something
about grief.
He is joined by the ghosts of
Abraham Lincoln and Hamlet’s father,
who chastise him with
banshee like battle hymns
and marching orders.
I can hardly hear them all
above the noise
of falling bombs,
bombs failing to hit the mark,
exploding in the periphery.
Ink splatters the blank
pages and my lips.
It tastes of blood.
Without story,
how can we
speak of god?
The long line of my forebears
steals letters from my head

with red hands
that tattoo sin into my skin.
I have sent many characters in
pursuit of an all-father
only to watch them fall
into the belly of the beast
becoming trapped behind
cage-like typewriter keys
when the sword of Hamlet proves
stronger than my pen.
Lincoln can no longer spell tragedy
with that hole in his skull.
Overhead a circling hawk cries Katsu!
Its sharp talons reflect the sun
as it lets fall another bomb.
Impact. Detonation.
That which is whole explodes into chaos,
chaos becomes equation,
equation becomes form, and as the pieces
of the body fall back to earth
I see the words that have yet to be written:
The council fire is embers.
Robert Bly is still muttering under his breath,
but Lincoln has run out of lines to read
and the ghost of Hamlet’s father
rests avenged.
The pigeons peck them all to pieces and
carry away some blank pages.
In the silence I notice
a pencil behind my ear.
It is short with no eraser,
badly bitten.
I stole the pencil from a young
fisherman by the name of Manolin,
who in search of the Old Man
hauled the pencil in from amid

the wreckage of the Pequod,
where it had come to rest
upon the deck within the claws
of a murdered Albatross.
The pencil has changed many hands.
The typewriter is still broken,
but it no longer matters.
With this pencil I shall carve
words into the blank page before me.
Overhead a hawk cries, Katsu!

cropped-eye-of-providence

John Haworth is a poet and writer in pursuit of a modern mythology. His work has appeared in Under the Devil’s Thumb, The Boulder Weekly, Spit Poet, and Braided Way. John is a self-educated bibliophile peering under every rock and twig for the answers to questions he can’t remember asking. He lives in Nederland Colorado and is not haunted by waters.

Photo: Ian Battaglia

three poems – sam albala

~ South Broadway Ghost Society ~ 2 Comments

girl and plane

half awake dreams

sam poem.jpg

dairy does that

I keep eating ice cream thinking it might save me.

                                                        from what?

who knows.

                                         the end of the world maybe.

fear of the end of the world.

                                                        dairy does that.

especially when you’re lactose intolerant.

 

 

middle finger to the patriarchy 

everyone loves a woman in distress.

                                 well tell everyone to fuck off.

 

cropped-ghost-january.jpg

Sam Albala is a poet nestled in the mountains of Colorado. She has a horizon habit and can often be found gobbling up the sky line while babbling about road trips, tea, and anatomical hearts, all with her mouth full of light. To see not-real-life horizons find @keepmindscreative on Instagram. To read more composed words, visit samanthaalbala.contently.com. 

Photo: Danny Trujillo