Through the Looking Glass
Land-starved and stubborn we pile
windows on top of windows and climb
so high everything looks small and distant.
Birds leap into the sky wide-eyed and unbound
and rocket themselves into cloud and blue-
stained glass stunned like butterflies
in freefall spinning and spiraling through
the wind. I heard the thick thump against
the double-pane and caught a mourning dove
as it fell solid as a blood-warm stone in my hands.
Its feathered imprint a chalk outline of wings
and beak left stamped against the looking glass.
Too often we see what we want to see until
it’s too late. I stick vinyl bird-shaped silhouettes
on the reflective surface like dusted ghosts
and recite them as I rub them flat with a card
sparrow, dove, cardinal, blue jay,
finch, mockingbird, grackle, wren.
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.
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/.
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.
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
awakening still / again
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.
You double tap hold your Airpods. Noise canceling activated. You have your sunglasses on.
You are indoors, in a book shop, somewhere in St. Paul, Minnesota. You are waiting for your turn to read. All these people are here to watch you read. Not just you, though. It’s never just you.
Your mentor is on stage reading an essay. He is animated. He can spit like a muhfucka.
You realize what essay he’s reading, and how traumatic it is for you to listen to. It reminds you of the Summer of Floyd, when everything burned around you. When you were afraid of racists from Wisconsin, who drove through these streets, laying cans of gas in alleyways. Shooting up Black homes. Coming back later that night to set them on fire.
You ask yourself how on God’s green earth you ended up in a place as racist as America.
You realize you never had a choice. Much like being a writer, you never had a choice.
Your family left Africa for this shit.
On your first night in America, it was a drive-by on your block in Atlanta.
You’ve always told that story and repeated that catchphrase: we left Africa for this shit?
You’re in the thick of it now. That essay is starting to crescendo. You can see the impact it’s having on your mentor. He is getting more animated in his delivery.
Damn, that nigga can spit.
Also: he is feeling it. You are feeling it, too. Pacing the corners of the room, nervous. You turn on Kodak Black. Kodak raps about murder, but it calms you down. Kodak raps about the things which he was born into, which he had no choice but to survive. Kodak raps about the struggle cuz it made him a man. You know about the struggle, but this audience of white faces won’t understand.
Your mentor is done reading now. It’s almost your turn to go on stage. You instinctively start walking towards him. You meet him just outside the audience’s expectant eyes. White people are always expecting something from us, aren’t they?
You embrace your mentor, now. He is shaking. You see the tears in his eyes. Not quite tears, but more like… a swelling, of moisture, just shy, of teardrops.
You hug him now. You stand there hugging. It is a shared struggle, these Black male bodies, in this country built on the understanding that all your bodies are worth is the price of strange fruit.
Poplar trees, nigga. Emasculation. Manhood stuffed inside of mouth. Tarred and feathered.
This the country where niggas like you come up missing. Whether you rap about murder like Kodak, or you stand in front of white audiences like a poet professor. You could come up missing, young nigga. No matter how old you are, you will always be a boy to them.
And you know this. Not even deep down, you know this consciously.
That’s why you don’t care about their praise, about their critique, about their putdowns.
You don’t care about their fear of your manhood. About their fetishes surrounding it.
You don’t care about their cuckold fascination.
White wives, Black dick. You don’t care about it.
You only care about your words, about your honor, dignity, life.
You go on stage to spit these bars, but you don’t even care about them half the time.
You only care about this moment, this shared embrace. Two Black men, acknowledging each other’s existence. Holding each other in ways that the world is incapable of.
You only care about the now.
And now… you go on stage.
Dim the lights.
Turn off that Kodak.
Fade to Black Man.
Said Shaiye is an Autistic Somali Writer & Photographer. His debut book, Are You Borg Now? was a 2022 Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir. He has contributed essays to the anthologies Muslim American Writers at Home, The Texas Review’s All-Poetry Issue, and We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World. He has published poetry & prose in Obsidian, Brittle Paper, Pithead Chapel, 580 Split, Entropy, Diagram, Rigorous, Night Heron Barks, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota, where he was a Graduate Instructor of Creative Writing, as well as a Judd International Research Fellow. He teaches writing to Autistic kids through Unrestricted Interest, as well as in the English Departments of several colleges in the Twin Cities.
Josh Gaydos (he/him/his) is a self-taught poet that currently resides in Colorado. He has been published in Barren Magazine, Door Is A Jar Magazine, The Lettered Olive and The City Quill. For 2023, he is releasing a poem a week on his free substack at https://joshgaydos.substack.com/InstagramTwitter
Someday, somewhere – anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.
Pablo Neruda
What does this quote mean to you?
Trite but true with some flowers is this Neruda quote to me. It’s stuck around since I read it and though I am finding that finding of self a great deal less static than this quote implies, it keeps me aware that I could wake up in a decade’s time and find what I’d been running for or running from had made me into something I despised. Sorry for rhyming so much.
What books have made an important impact on you and why?
Too many so I’ll pull the first five that come to mind. East of Eden by John Steinbeck, captures human nature and our interconnectedness, the fact he addressed it to his young sons and was saying “here it is, everything” and delivers. frank: sonnets by Diane Suess, for the “isness”, not answering the Sirens call on a happy feeling or ending, the ability to paint a landscape as big as a coast and also write a poem about the grout around a brick (I’m being figurative here). What Work Is by Phillip Levine, for laying out that blue-collar / American working condition with romanticism and disdain, to put himself in it, distance himself from it, and paint individuals like they were in the room with you. Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems, the ‘other poems’ in that just drop you somewhere and you’re immersed, it could be India and you feel the dense downpour with a herd of water buffalo walking by or New Orleans, or Compton. Robin puts you there in a way I haven’t been transported before or since. Another big one for me is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. My mom had given me that when I really went headfirst into this writing thing. That book helped me to make a point to find art and make space for art wherever I was. Watch a movie, read a book, spin some vinyl and pull feeling or a scene from everything.
What is the value of writing and art in the current state of the world?
Sanity. Gelling and coming to terms with the cracks.
How has writing and art helped to form the person you are today?
I wouldn’t be here without it, and I don’t just mean serving a guest editing stint for this press. I’d be dead, or fishing with my hands and a line in the Gulf, or possibly I’d be a merchant marine. Most likely dead though.
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.
There is no such second place in the world where so many noteworthy moments have been saved. How many of your breaths flickered on the walls, how many of your tears soaked the floor, nobody knows. A part of your heart will stay here forever, no matter where the wings of fate take you. It’s a magic point, the mind remembers it as the heart longs for it, one and only—home.
Norbert Góra is a 32-year-old poet and writer from Poland. He is the author of more than 100 poems which have been published in poetry anthologies in USA, UK, India, Nigeria, Kenya and Australia.
This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology, Dwell: Poems About Home.Purchase here.
I’m airing out the house of my heart. All the cobwebbed corners, the shelves of knickknacks, are being dusted unmercifully. I’m opening the shutters letting the wind blow out the musty smell of disuse. I’m putting flowers in all the rooms. Even the basement, the attic ignored for so long are getting a going over. All that old junk has got to go. It’s just shelter for spiders that tap away when the lights come on.
I’m trying to put the house of my heart in order. “Smarten up,” I say, adjusting the bowties of my fears. “Stand up straight,” I say, brushing off the jackets of my doubts. “Everyone be on your best behavior,” I say to my wants and needs. “We have a guest coming.”
South Broadway Ghost Society 