I do not ask her if she believes that the fairies will really come, that they might be searching for a tiny backyard house in which to dwell. Even if they were, no magical creature would choose to live in this tangle of sticks over which we have fussed for far too long. It doesn’t matter that the bed of moss will go un-slept in. I will not worry myself with exactness or proportions of bark chair to mushroom table. The fairies will never complain about such things. We busy ourselves with flower petal carpets and arranging decorations of shiny quartz pebble just so. The final product is never quite what she envisioned. The furnishings are rustic and the roof keeps falling in each time it is adjusted by little fingers with the best of intentions. She will remember building everything herself. When it is gone, when the rain and breeze and rot have scattered the remnants she will remember it as a jeweled palace, a luxurious home. She will sleep comfortably in her own bed knowing the fairies are well cared for, imagining she had tucked them in herself, kissed them gently on the forehead the way Daddy does before he whispers good night.
Christopher Clauss (he/him) is an introvert, Ravenclaw, father, poet, photographer, and middle school science teacher in rural New Hampshire. His mother believes his poetry is “just wonderful.” Both of his daughters declare that he is the “best daddy they have,” and his pre-teen science students rave that he is “Fine, I guess. Whatever.”
This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, Dwell: Poems About Home.Purchase here.
The cold stars clicking their claws together like crabs in a tank. History changes and runs off the page like butter. The world has been dragged through me, and I’ve been dragged through the world. We’re even. Stars twirl over stinking trenches, beginning a subtle magnetic resurrection that will take all time and never end. The mind is a machine to move matter. The scenes are super modern. The earth has us, and we multiply. Founded in an impulse of wild lonely need, not serious planning. The stars dissolve in my mouth not my hand. Let this life not be a torment. Let the stars stop shaking. Please, God. I will turn my greatest tricks for you.
Zack Kopp is a freelance writer, editor, photographer, graphic artist, and literary agent currently living in Denver, Colorado. His informal history of the Beat Generation’s connections with Denver was published by The History Press in 2015. Kopp’s books are available at Amazon, and you can find his blog at the website for his indie hybrid press at www.campelasticity.com featuring interviews and articles and links to other websites. His improvised novel, Public Hair, was described by one critic as “simultaneously the best and worst book ever.” The latest chapter of Kopp’s “fantastic biography” (Cf. Billy Childish), Henry Crank’s History of Wonders is expected in 2022.
And if the branches touch the window And the poplar trees quake That is how you are on my mind And I slowly get closer to you
And if the stars touch the lake Lighting it up, deeply That is how I make peace with my pain Illuminating the thought
And if the clouds though leave They exit towards the glistening moon That is how my memories return to me Of you forever
Şi dacă
Şi dacă ramuri bat în geam Şi se cutremur plopii, E ca în minte să te am Şi-ncet să te apropii.
Şi dacă stele bat în lac Adâncu-i luminându-l, E ca durerea mea s-o-mpac Înseninându-mi gândul.
Şi dacă norii deşi se duc De iese-n luciu luna, E ca aminte să-mi aduc De tine-ntotdeauna.
About the Poet
Mihai Eminescu (born Mihail Eminovici; 15 January 1850 – 15 June 1889) was a Romanian Romantic poet from Moldavia, novelist, and journalist, generally regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet.
About the Translator
Cristina A. Bejan is an award-winning Romanian-American historian, theatre artist, and poet. A Rhodes and Fulbright scholar, she is a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Bejan received her DPhil (PhD) in Modern History from the University of Oxford. A playwright and spoken word poet (her stage name is Lady Godiva), her creative work has appeared in the US, UK, Romania, and Vanuatu. In addition to many scholarly articles, she has published a poetry book (Green Horses on the Walls), history book (Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania), and a play in Voices on the Move (eds. Radulescu and Cazan).
Come, again, and walk beside me down the verdant path, ‘cross this deathly sprawl, reading poetry from tombstones and the yellowed pages of your tattered Lorca. How sweet the ballads and laments on the breeze that sift through soft yews— just yonder— that shake like fists at wrought-iron gates— at Heaven— clutching their red burdens (in clusters) like beating hearts to breasts of evergreen. Dance with me to the whispers of cypress trees— so tall they cut the sky, bloodying what God painted blue, and the laughter of boys and girls, as they duck and dart from behind the pale bounty of this garden of stone, reveling in perpetual games of tag and Hide & Seek. Will you find me at dewy dawn amongst sprays of grocery store bouquets in cellophane wrappings that cry silent tears? Or in the cold of a moonrise, contemplating our stars and the gossip of earthworms? When…o when, will I see you, again? Will memory outlast the letters of my name? Loneliness the promise? There is no end (so it seems) to this longing, our endless game (Who hides? Who seeks?), just a stone on my pillow and the endless promise of evergreen.
David Estringel is a Xicanx writer/poet with works published in literary publications, such as The Opiate, Azahares, Cephalorpress, Lahar, Poetry Ni, DREICH, Somos En Escrito, Ethel, The Milk House, Beir Bua Journal, and The Blue Nib. His first collection of poetry and short fiction Indelible Fingerprints was published April 2019, followed Blood Honey and Cold Comfort House in 2022. David has written five poetry chapbooks, Punctures, PeripherieS, Eating Pears on the Rooftop, as well as Golden Calves and Blue (coming 2023). His new book of micro poetry little punctures will be released in December 2022. Connect with David on Twitter @The_Booky_Man and his website www.davidaestringel.com.
There are quite a few miles that crevice you from home,
Like the zip of your suitcase that flies between hope and not-hope.
I can only imagine how the fridge door must be slamming, unlike the one back here—
Extended supplies shunting faster than Turner’s baby,
The one that cries but never comes.
Do you wake each day to a finite line
And trace back the rhino’s trail
You had smiled about the other day?
Does Bishop speak clearer now
And blur your vocabulary?
I am afraid I will forget your smiling hair
And the exact shade of your red lipstick
(The traces are already starting to drift).
Lie to me when I ask about happiness
Or perhaps halt the track of my question
(‘Are you home yet?’)
With a whistle or a red flag,
For then I can at least begin to unmemorise
Your face greeting me in some departure lounge.
Jayati Das is a research scholar from Tezpur University, India, and holds a Master’s degrees in English Literature frotm the University of Delhi. Her areas of research include representations of the Vietnam War, masculinity studies, and queer cinema. She has won over a dozen prizes in creative writing at the college and university levels. Several of her poems and stories have been published in The Assam Tribune, The Sentinel, and e-magazines like The Golden Line, including a story in an anthology titled DU Love. Her published research includes essays on the Mizo poet, Mona Zote, race in Othello, and on Pedro Almodóvar’s cinema.
This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, Dwell: Poems About Home.Purchase here.
The British built it, upon our home, In Idukki, amidst the feral mountains Of Western Ghats*, This structure—a leviathan of construction, Which they said was The symbol of modernity, An accomplishment of human effort, This sterile, dark, tearing off the heart, Of the Western Ghats, The dam with which they also ruled, Nature with alacrity. For two hundred years, the empire governed Our desires and hopes, destinies and dreams. Our home enchained, Under the hoof of the emperor’s horse, Dying, rising, dying again, rising again, Like an old creature heaving for its last breath. But the old and spent Doesn’t impress the empire, And it left this land, its nature, And the people, with a tale Of condescending kindness, Letting the “young” nation self-govern, With warnings of possible schisms. But with general consolations At the possible victories gained: Like the railways, the dams, the roads, And the democratic spirit. The siren of the train is bearable, And so is the sluggishness Of the democratic system, And bureaucracy, but the dam— A silent monstrosity of Idukki, Governing the Ghats with its grey bosom, Serving mostly electric power-supplies. It’s old, with dark lines of age growing On the ramparts of the reservoirs, Mossy, slippery wall, waiting— For its final fall, every Monsoon, Drowning our dwelling places Underneath the dammed up spirit Of the wild and tortured river, Surpassing human alacrity. So when the rains ravage, We hear the echoes, of death— Riding the horse of the old emperor, Upon the ramparts of the old walls, With the fear of death, Still governing us.
[1] Idukki is one of the southern restrictions in Kerala state, India, which is situated in the Western Ghats.
[2] Western Ghats is a chain of mountains bordering Kerala’s western side, which is known as ecologically fragile.
We do not push the walls out but instead pull the room in, drink our already small space. My clothes, washed and bagged, are still too big for this disappearing body—it’s like a magic trick: blink and you’ll miss me. I’m not tangible anymore, these bed bugs eating away more than just our bedspread. Touch this translucent skin and maybe you’ll find something stronger than the body I see before me in tinted windows, in tagged pictures. I think about House of Leaves, the home that did not know what size it was, about the men who found themselves less than they thought they knew, the codes hidden, dark filled with whatever meaning the reader can pour from themselves
I mistakenly called this place a home
I walled myself in
there are no doors here
this is not an entrance.
Andrew Walker is a writer living and working in Denver, Colorado. His work has appeared in HAD,Crack the Spine, Eckleburg, paperplates, Apricity Press and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @druwalker94 or on his website at druwalker.com.
This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, Dwell: Poems About Home.Purchase here.
Long beams are carried in on strong arms, belts fitted with tools and the Oklahoma sun warming the backs of the heads of workers remodeling the house across the street though it’s colder than usual for these parts in February—even a dusting of snow. The grass crunches beneath their boots, dry, and blonde like a young woman’s hair, as I watch them unload their truck, turning toward one another now and then to chat or chuckle or pat a back before lifting another board. The windows of this home must be original, the same panes of glass it was born with and I wonder if they will be replaced, if the paper that surely continues to adorn the walls, peeling, will be stripped, its bones re-fleshed in fresher hues, if the organs that pump life into toilets, showers, and sinks, into outlets, lights, hairdryers, and phones will undergo surgery. How long until the porch is secure and the roof healed of all its leaking? A few bi-fold doors lean against the home’s old siding— closets, it seems, have been opened and rendered doorless as heaps of a former life are gathered in piles of trash that exit the home in large bags. Down the street at the halfway house, men smoking cigarettes also observe this pageantry with me and I wonder if they are thinking what I am thinking—that someone bought that house with all its imperfections, after an assessment, not knowing exactly how the whole thing will turn out. The sky grows overcast and snow begins to fall again so the men at the halfway house drop embers unto the sidewalk to go indoors as the workers hood their heads and continue working. I pull my blanket tighter over my shoulders letting the cool flakes fall against my face and litter the doorstep around me. I can’t leave now no matter what happens— this is the part of the story I still like.
The stray dogs bite. There’s glass in the sand, too worn to cut a toe. A toddler giggles running from her family toward the waves. They urge her back. On the beach road, I can’t tell if the sound of a car approaching from behind is the surf until headlights flash. The gate of the abandoned school for “incapacitados” is chained shut, has been for months, sargassum and plastic washing under. Classroom walls of cracked concrete. Graffiti on graffiti. A phantom yell of gringo! Spitting rain. It will pour any minute. Then it doesn’t. The yacht club sells pizzas to expats but no one is hungry tonight. Wind scatters plastic chairs around tables as if customers were full and anxious to get home, then as if the patio were raided by stray dogs. Each palm tree has a personal hair dryer. The expats, like stray dogs, growl at newcomers, bark at each other into the night. The expats feed the stray dogs. Cheapest alarm system I ever had, says one to another. A pack gathers in front of his second home like hyenas, vicious, grinning. Testicles, teats, purpled, withered fruit clinging to the vine. They shit where they want. A passerby steps in it, curses. A passerby kicks out but we see who is really afraid. A passing car accelerates, achieves revenge. The corpse of a stray dog in a ditch stinking until it won’t anymore. Expats think the pandemic a hoax or conspiracy initiated by Jews. The expats are assholes, says an expat, but they are old. They die quick. One, on his moto, was run over by a microbus last week. He exploded like a McDonalds ketchup package.
2.
I speak to a loved one on the phone. She insists, there is something you’re not telling me. Twists and flecks of iridium, extraterrestrial metal, shocked quartz and glass beads discovered in the rock core. Water-winged children hurling themselves into cenotes, earth’s empty eye sockets, prehispanic graveyards, skeletons fished out from 100 meters deep, bats zig-zagging over water underground. I’m alone in the port city of Progreso. Chicxclub, site of climate disruption, mass extinction, ancient rerouting of life. A meteor with the power of 1,000 atomic bombs. We won’t give the universe time for another go. A seagull missing a foot lands near my dinner, gingerly using the stump for balance, swaying more than usual in the breeze. A flamingo limping across a salty lake. A stray dog hopping. An ex-pat in a wheelchair. Landmine in Afghanistan. Crowded hovels with no running water inland. Abandoned mansions on the coast. Mold, erosion, dilapidation. A hurricane isn’t at fault. The money ran out or virus. Crackling bass and reggaetón and shouts from inside one shell of a building that isn’t theirs, the windows boarded up and papered over. From the terrace three floors up a young Mexican points to the liter of beer in his hand and yells, ¡Súbate, Güero! I pass through a door with a busted lock.
3. A group of 20-somethings chugging beer around an empty pool. Racing to inebriation. Pulling ahead in the race to elude annihilation. Assembled from various regions of Mexico, here to construct a suburbia of sorts outside the port city, an international village. They pass me a joint, I bum them English cigarettes too expensive for Mexico. They push a phone with a PowerPoint presentation in front of me. Condos with rooftop gardens, windmills, and solar panels resembling Mayan pyramids constructed over the ruins of Mayan pyramids long ago chewed, swallowed, and still being digested by jungle. Graphene super metal and recycled plastics. Bubble tech and defoaming. Optimum insulation and acoustics, less CO2 release. Jargon, gospel, babble of sustainability. New lingo for the industry, the lexicon, the public imagination. Off the grid. Supposedly free from the control and corruption of government, of cartels. I say it sounds like a cult and an interior designer giggles wiggling her pointer finger up and down, says sí, sí, como Charley Manson. Voice automated everything—your entertainment, your coffee pot, your bidet. All-inclusive. More amenities promised than a liberal arts college. A Burger King. Probably a mini-Target. The promise of consumerism preserved amid the crash of exterior markets. Top priority: Security. AK-47s, M-16s, Uzis. Bulletproof vests and jackets that look like you’re going to church or brunch. Fences with barbed wire as tall as border walls. Here in the shell of an ex-expat’s vacation home the other American dream of the gated community lifted, romanticized, enhanced. Ultra-militarized. Elon Musk might support the project, claims an energy specialist. Living there will be like working for Google, boasts the jungle rave DJ. There is opportunity in crisis, they add. They have acquired the land. Started construction. Convinced expats to invest, possibly retire there. I jokingly ask the CEO, Who will be eaten first when the apocalypse comes? He nods toward a stray dog eying us from below and as serious as climate change says, could be any of us.
Dustin King teaches Spanish and runs a small organization that provides aide to undocumented community in Richmond, Va. His poems appear in Blood and Bourbon, Ligeia, Tilted House, Drunk Monkey and other magazines. He most recently made the longlist in the 2021 UK national poetry competition.
This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, Dwell: Poems About Home.Purchase here.
Growing up, my home was a closet. Not the metaphorical closet where I tucked my sexuality. More precisely, my home was an 8x11in guide to Colorado fish my grandfather gave me to mold my sexuality. Which I tucked inside my closet. In which were tucked letters to my adolescent loves like Jamie, Ally, Shelly, and Jack (especially to Jack). In which, I dreamed of our skeletal home without closets. Where my mother did not tuck her guilt, and the father did not tuck his abusive addictions. Where Jack drove the Hot Wheels car he gave me after our play date. Just like Ken in Aqua’s Barbie Doll.
There is no instruction manual with the postscript delivered by the owl to your closet proclaiming, “You’re a homosexual, Harry.” By trial and error, you come to understand the fragility of home. And the fragility of queer. And how both must often be constructed like lean-tos on the pull-out couches of allies.
Like tornados, like earthquakes, like tsunamis, like men in I.C.E. uniforms, my nature was a disaster a home could not weather. So, home became a lonely rainbow. A refraction of tears staining pictures of cutthroat trout.
Whether by cosmic dramatic irony or systematic oppression, when your home is queer, so often your home becomes a bar. Where fags bundle like fags. And smoke fags. And drink like, well, like fish. Most of whom are obsessed with being fish. So, I learned a new language that gave transformative space to my transient home. Sashay! Shontay! Cinched! Boots the house down! Beat for the gods!
I learned that language, too, was a home. Ours was one that could not be deciphered. Because no one cares to decipher why our family struggles with substance abuse at nearly twice the average rate. How our expansive forest of intersectional trees denoting our lineage drinks from a stigmatized watering hole. Yet, the branches stay sturdy enough for us to take our lives at five times the average rate.
I have read enough obituaries to know how mine may sound. Taken unexpectedly. After a long struggle. As if the struggle was never an indication of the homophobe. Or the revolver. Or how unsurprisingly often they’re the same. I mean, the gay homophobe with a revolver. Taking a family with him that would have died to show him how to live. In a home called queer.
I will be survived by a long list of family that never embraced me. With no mention of the love that allowed me to survive.
But I have found home.
My home is not a structure I ride shotgun to in Jack’s hot wheel car. Home is not a bed on which I lay my head when the world insists I don’t belong. My home cannot be taken by a natural or xenophobic disaster. Home is not a mortality statistic. My home is not an early grave.
My home is queer.
And I vow my home will always be open to anyone who thinks theirs is just a closet filled with unread love letters.
Caleb Ferganchick is a rural, queer, slam poet activist and author of Poetry Heels (2018). His work has been featured and published by the South Broadway Ghost Society (2020, 2021), “Slam Ur Ex ((the podcast))” (2020), and the Colorado Mesa University Literary Review. He organizes the annual “Slamming Bricks” poetry slam competition in honor of the 1969 Stonewall Riots and serves as a board member to Western Colorado Writer’s Form. A SUP river guide, Caleb also dreams of establishing a queer commune with a river otter rescue and falconry. He lives in Grand Junction, Colorado.
This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, Dwell: Poems About Home.Purchase here.
South Broadway Ghost Society 