break through the distance
back from the moon
circle around the globe
I sit next to you
you ask me if the canyon spirit
is going to die
we shelter in place
on a small bench
by the fountain
in Civic Center
surrounded by trees
“we have to rely
on ourselves
to keep it alive”
I say
the wind blows
people are howling
and their loneliness
and yearning
for all that they once held
burns through the dusk
you ask me if
i can feel it
“feel what” I ask
“the wild return”
you say
“of what”
I say
“of everything we ever loved
and never could tame”
TedVaca Denver poet father lover crime fighter / semi holy somewhat sweet can be bitter / published here and there / Founder of The Mercury Cafe poetry slam / Coach of the 2006 Championship Denver Slam Team / Member of the 1995 Championship Slam Team from Asheville NC / Intergalactic Provocateur
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.
what is taking so long? someone asks
with plastic card in hand
I will still hand over supplemental checks
like nails that board up a boat
I call them life savers out of need
even for these staples
while a scan and rescan of each item
ensures eligibility because even if WIC stickers
are misplaced on the shelves the register
has the final say and I am ready so ready
to turn around if someone gives me the drill
or again remarks it must be nice to get free food
I’ll iron out their words with my defenses
hey I’m a working professor and father
adding how I qualify as poor how my wife and I
were drilled at the food assistance office
hammered by every question
from someone who speaks in the tone
of a kindergarten teacher so my boys
will have food at the end of the month
unlike so many children in this town
even the retired chaplain who overheard
kids could get a free lunch
said why don’t they get a job
Dennis Etzel Jr. lives in Topeka, Kansas with Carrie and the boys where he teaches English at Washburn University. His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others.
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.
Buried corn spilt milk
What good is a food system
when it doesn’t feed?
Can you believe it? We’re actually throwing away tens of millions of pounds of fresh vegetables, fruits? We’re doing it because “it can’t be moved” and “nothing is EVER free.” But couldn’t we make some Alphabet Soup? Job the jobless, move the food, set a new goal that if we have so much that we’d trash it we’d be smarter and kinder and truer to Greatness by finding every open mouth and grumbling gut and filling them with sustenance—if rarely meaning, here—because there’d be at least one bold checkmark in the WIN column? Think of the Ratings! MILLIONS RE-EMPLOYED TO DO SOMETHING PURPOSEFUL, MILLIONS MORE NOT STARVING IN THE CORNERS AND NOOKS OF OUR PREPOSTEROUS OPULENCE.
NateRagolia is Co-Founder of Spaceboy Books LLC., a Denver-based indie sci-fi press. He’s also Editor-in-Chief of BONED: A Collection of Skeletal Writings. His two books, There You Feel Free and The Retroactivist express his ongoing frustrations with economic systems designed to leave people behind. And he’s hopeful that things can still be changed for the better in his lifetime.
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.
Fortifying her core, she sips a poverty of water,
muting the fresh-corn brilliance of her body
with white curtains. She awaits a joy bobbin
to hover at her concentric breast. She knows
a scarred Saturday implies renewal.
Instincts tell her: wait, respire, listen.
Turning her face skyward, she takes
her mother’s gifts: rain, the hum of bees.
Maria S. Picone has an MFA from Goddard College. She’s interested in cultural issues, identity, and memory. As a Korean adoptee in an Italian American family and a New Englander, her obsessions with noodles, seafood, and the ocean are hardly her fault. Her poetry appears in Homestead Review, Ariel Chart, Headline Poetry, Mineral Lit Mag, and Route 7 Review. Her Twitter is @mspicone, and her website is mariaspicone.com.
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.
As giant ants march ahead in nightly arrays
Demonstrating against the ruling humans
Along the main street of every major city
Hordes of hordes of vampires flood in, screaming
Aloud, riding on hyenas and
Octopuses, waving skeletons
In their hairy hands, whipping at old werewolves
Or all-eyed aliens standing by
With their blood-dripping tails
Gathering behind the masses are ghosts and spirits
Of all the dead, victims of fatal diseases
Murders, rapes, tortures, wars, starvation, plagues
Led by deformed devils and demons
As if in an uprising, to seek revenge
On every living victor in the human shape
Some smashing walls and fences, others
Barbecuing human hearts like inflated frogs
Still others biting at each other’s soul around black fires
All in a universal storm of ashes and blood
Up above in the sky is a red dragon flying by
With a heart infected by the human virus
Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Jodi Stutz Award in Poetry (2020) & publications in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among others across 45 countries.
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.
The first nine months
Of our life
Was spent
In quarantine
Nurtured by the wisdom
Of our mother’s mothers
Nutrified by the Earth
Suckling
As one being in body
Organic
In nature.
Symbiotic
Symbol of continuation.
Why
Have we not returned
Awareness to the womb
In these times
Seek the divine dark
From which the spark of life
Was bourne?
Why
Have we not sought
The wisdom of those who came
Before separation
Before degradation
And desecration of mind
And spirit?
Why
Have we not embraced
The girth of the earth
Beneath our feet?
Learn of what this bigness
Be. Hear what the bees
Buzz; news
Of the Ancient Ascent
And the absence
Of each.
Noise.
Uttered in tongue
And misidentified meaning
Ideological demons
Occupying the homes
Turned house–
The bodies
Turned louse–
Parasitic
Prophet of death
And termination
Living in the fauna
Of our mouths.
Hands balled into fists
Tightness taught us
To savor our anger
As a way to resist
The falling dominoes
And kingdoms
Devoid of glory and
fortified, sanctified
Foundation
Tumbling– remains
Creating another story–
Debris, and crumbs
Of those numbed
Translated as the way
To salvation.
And thus, the birth of this new nation.
Always and always
More and more
Preaching the gospel of lonely
And fragmentation
Disintegration of awareness
Assimilation of fear
Abandonment of what is
In search of what was never there—
Perfection in the flesh
Salvation in what we can hold
What we can mold
From our dastardly desires— …………..A kingdom foretold …………..Whose fall approaches.
In the wombs of our rooms
Let us croon ourselves into
Gestation
Into carry
Into hold
Let us sing, sing, sing
Lullabies of light light light
And drift, drift, drift
into the silence of the Darkness
That brought us to be
Behind every word that we speak
Let us abandon every pit- ……………………………………………ting against
Form us into I
Into one
Into yo soy
Io sono
Je suis
Daughter and Son
Husband and Wife
Mother and Father
Sister and Brother
man/woman
Divinity made flesh
Masculine-Feminine
Oneness in our chest
And from this cavity …………………………………..—this hollow—
That breathes
Blood and remembrance
Let us grow our seeds.
Melissa Ferrer is a renegade with hippie tendencies. Through poetry she seeks to provide a sense of solidarity to all people, encourage people to act unto peace and love, and foster community among both the like and unlike minded. Recently, she’s been yearning to set down her ego and replace it with a jubilation of the spirit. She wants you to join in, in whatever capacity you can.
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.
to a woman who has just lost her finger climbing over a chain-link fence crossing the border into Texas.
to the dusty rubble, and everything beneath, moments after a bomb has incinerated a home.
to a sun-washed bedroom where a seven year old child has just died of cancer in his mother & father’s arms.
Poetry is not just metaphor and meter, allegory and alliteration.
Poetry is access:
to the secret hobbies of protozoans.
to the color of chlorophyll.
to the lover you secretly yearn for but know will destroy you.
to enough magic to bring your cat back from a velvet bag of ashes embroidered with his name.
A poem can only be
what it can access.
Cortney Collins is a poet living in Longmont, CO. A four-time winner of Fort Collins’ First Friday Poetry Slam at The Bean Cycle, her work has been published by South Broadway Ghost Society, Amethyst Review, Devil’s Party Press, Back Patio Press, 24hr Neon Mag, The Naropa Vagina Monologues Zine, and is forthcoming in Tiny Spoon Lit Mag. During these strange and surreal times, she hosts a weekly poetry virtual open mic, Zoem. She shares a home with her beloved cat, Pablo, and tries to eat just the right amount of kale.
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.
morbid savior born
on the doorstep of a corporation
the poor, voracious, gorge the forfeited thorns of corrupt senators opportunistic authoritarians they savor disproportionate offshore fortunes worship incorruptible corpses while gormandizing landlords orbit our torn world
i am the disorder in my aborted
forty fourth form
orthodox corpus
my torso deteriorates at the crematorium
or by ordinary worms
elaborate airport territories
vacant expanses for corona
dictatorial
not for foreign territories or shores
commemorate our glorious world
commemorate our glorious world
André O. Hoilette is a Jamaican born poet living in Denver. He is a Cave Canem alum and former editor or ambulant: A Journal of Poetry & Art and Nexus magazine. Hoilette is currently pursuing MFAs in Fiction and Poetry from Regis University. He work has been published in Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander (A global anthology of social justice poetry) , Role Call, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Cave Canem 10 anniversary reader, milk magazine and other publications.
Our grandchildren are in the vanguard
of human evolution, autism possibly
the latest mutation, since change
has one leg up on adaptation.
Trouble is, the microbes
mutate faster than we do
and have had more practice.
In the matter of intelligence they
have outguessed us more than once.
It will require our best to see this through.
The past two Halloweens
my autistic grandson has gone
trick-or-treating as a hazmat zombie,
as if he owned a crystal ball
for the coronavirus.
Maybe we should turn our welfare
over to children, who might be
more adaptable than
millionaires over seventy
masquerading as world leaders.
Gerry Sloan is a poet and musician living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He has two poetry collections: Paper Lanterns (2011) and Crossings: A Memoir in Verse (2017), recent work appearing in Elder Mountain, Cave Region Review, Xavier Review, and Slant. He often defaults to hot tea and old movies for solace.
