a worm
lethargic hope
is limping in the bottom
of my mind,
like a worm is creeping
on the floor.
it never allows me
to give up on everything.
it leads me to dawn
again and again.
Yuu Ikeda (she/they) is a Japan based poet. She loves writing, reading novels, western art, and sugary coffee.She writes poetry on her website: https://poetryandcoffeedays.wordpress.com/. Her latest poetry collection “A Knife She Holds” was published from Newcomer Press. Her Twitter and Instagram : @yuunnnn77
Factoring
I did not see the naked man on King Street.
He was one of those “Nudes for God.”
Instead, Jacob slides in like a snail on pink slime.
wailing, as high-pitched as a gibbon.
He rubs his puckered eyes roughly.
And his jelly-mouth ripples in the clock face.
Five in the morning detaches itself from time.
His kiss unties me though it smells of dead cologne.
I am only here so I can be here when he’s here.
My secret life continues it existence in him.
But he’s kin to a decomposed insect.
I squeeze his innards into a likeness of myself.
Well-Spread
There are parts of me everywhere.
Like curled up on a park bench.
Or preaching the dead cult of sex.
Or naked and looking for work.
I deserve breeze but reap the stillness.
My gloomy fire begins as ashes.
In the reading room of the public library,
that’s my head opened wide at page 3.
Herman Melville spits in my ear.
I follow a handsome man into a doctor’s office.
I slink into a movie theater, drink out of an army boot.
Snow or gay bar, the flakes prove inconclusive.
Andrej Bilovsky (he/him) is a gay poet and performance artist. Former editor of Masculine-Feminine and Kapesnik. His poetry can be found at the Quiver and Down In The Dirt.
Fog
Fog lies low over the land.
Rain drives soft across the fields.
Comatose landscape.
There is nothing immediate we can hope for,
now we have nothing to do but breathe,
until something better shows up.
We are holding each other,
expecting a miracle at dawn,
as if there were no one and nothing to hurt us.
Beginning in mid-May the nights draw in,
our look turns warm and soft,
the fog passes gently over us,
we’d like to ask the fog—
don’t talk to us, our heart’s been broken,
we can’t listen to you, we can’t see you,
but the fog covers us and says:
I never see myself either,
in my own mind I’m invisible,
that’s why you may feel I’m almighty,
you are like birds, your flight
begins and ends in silence,
you will find yourselves in each other only,
silence is garden, among the growing dreams
and precious wishes
you will discover each other again,
everything that will ever be discovered,
already exists in the mist.
David Dephy (he/him) (pronounced as “DAY-vid DE-fee”), is an American award-winning poet and novelist. The founder of Poetry Orchestra, a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee for Brownstone Poets, an author of full-length poetry collection Eastern Star (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2020), and A Double Meaning, also a full-length poetry collection with co-author Joshua Corwin, (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2022). His poem, “A Sense of Purpose,” is going to the moon in 2024 by The Lunar Codex, NASA, Space X, and Poetry on Brick Street. He is named as Literature Luminary by Bowery Poetry, Stellar Poet by Voices of Poetry, Incomparable Poet by Statorec, Brilliant Grace by Headline Poetry & Press and Extremely Unique Poetic Voice by Cultural Daily. He lives and works in New York City.
I ACKNOWLEDGE MY MOUTH WORM
What do I know of my own tongue and the taste of love?
For one thing, I savor the bitterness of envelope glue.
This is love;
and the metal of minor open wounds in the absence of band-aids or tissues,
and the rim of a water glass that has sat reverently on a nightstand for too long.
All the food I eat on a day when I don’t feel like eating,
and toothpaste…look at me, taking care of myself.
What does my tongue know of me, and the soft skin of my inner cheeks?
The spots where anxiety has compelled me to bite.
Blisters.
Blisters are kind of like love.
Too much friction, and evidence to show for it.
How many flavors of Chapstick?
Where sweetnesses and disappointments traverse the landscape.
An ecosystem within an ecosystem.
Mother tongue.
My mother, tongue.
A muscle strong from carrying all the messages that never made it out of me.
Laced with secrets, and receptors of breaths both known and foreign.
A transformer, look!
Slack, and pointy, and soft, flat, and rigid.
Hot dog!
Clover!
Funny faces are love.
My tongue is well versed in survival tactics;
like, how to breathe through smoke,
and how to hold, and hold, and hold tension.
Braving cold summer snow cones and steamy winter teas.
It maintains equilibrium when the rest of the body cannot.
What does my tongue know of travel?
Having trekked roofs, and hollows, and caverns.
Cavities, too.
A paleontologist in its own right,
and a philologist, and a virologist, and a cytologist.
Knowing of more -ologies than a brain might ever be.
Teaching me, and teaching me, and teaching me.
This is love.
For a prisoner of the mouth, my tongue manages to sustain a taste for life.
For love –
and the bitterness of envelope glue,
and the metal of minor open wounds in the absence of band-aids or tissues,
and the rim of a water glass that has sat reverently on a nightstand for too long.
All the food I eat on a day when I don’t feel like eating,
and toothpaste.
Look at me, tasting it all.
Aliza Saper is an original Denverite, and a wearer of many creative hats. She is the winner of the 29th Paul Rice Poetry Broadside Series Contest, and a 2018 National Poetry Slam qualifier. Currently, she is a resident teaching artist specializing in theatre arts integration; fiercely advocating for arts education, and spaces that support it. Her affinity for self expression, and meaning-making has led her to pursue endeavors in storytelling via the visual, literary, and performing arts. Follow her on Instagram: @aliza_lynn.
‘glad god said i’m allowed to be alive’ he said to whomever was listening,
sang a tiny song to praise god and included everyone in the room
buildings across the street bathed his armchair in rainbow neon
the combined aura of different advertisements at different distances
he sang a praise song to combat difficult feelings
the neighbor’s little girl asked him not to die until he got older
he promised not to die until he got older
so when she dies, everyone would be there to meet her in heaven
to walk her to her room
he washed dishes and wondered
if they were still rolling dice down the street,
he wiped down dishes and wondered
if all the stores were open,
he found his armchair was a neon tinted throne
his shadow on the floor held a stairway
he knew if he went down into the shadow stairway
he could keep going down forever
he wanted to go up instead
forever
but there was no staircase in the ceiling, not now
god said it was not his time to go yet
god said he was allowed to stay alive
there were just moths there, studying the lightbulb
there were just moths on the ceiling
with crushes on the lightbulb
he was sure the ceiling wouldn’t open until death
he promised her he wouldn’t die yet
she wanted to die now so she could see grandma
he assured her that grandma would still be there
he told her to live a life, find a man, have kids, grow old
she didn’t listen she was afraid of going outside
when she went to bed there wasn’t any music
just her voice improvising praise songs
to combat difficult feelings
he fell asleep before her
didn’t dream of anything at all
every night is a strange mystery
still he said ‘glad god said i’m allowed to be alive’
when he prayed at church we caught his cheating,
opening his eyes a crack to copy our wishes
opening his eyes a crack to check on his own shadow
to make sure there wasn’t a stairway there
to make sure the trapdoor was closed
so he wouldn’t fall into his shadow
and leave the sanctuary suddenly
the streetcorner crowded
the stores still open
the street goes past the bridge
but there it is just factories and warehouses
nobody there are night except those who don’t know what’s going on
the people who stand around like ghosts and
disappear when you turn your head to look
Tall City (Chris Bullock) was born and got bigger on Long Island, New York. He did a few things then moved to Colorado Springs after trying to study in Paris. He did a few things there too, then moved to Denver, where he went back to school for foreign language. A couple of years on scholarship in China, and he is back in Denver.
Thrift Shops
What you search for is
an approximation—
musk of old clothes,
utensils sans luster,
broken toys,
nicked plates—
disappearance of the new,
markings-down of the faded,
the distressed but
nothing to be done:
a secondhand life
exacts cost
and reduces value yet you’re
still in the hunt,
a fox burrowing among
burial mounds of apparel,
treadless shoes,
non-brand sports gear,
dubious appliances in
a cast-off world.
Green
Luis’s duckbill shadowed
His eyes. That’s how he
Liked it. He was quiet as a shadow.
When I elicited an answer, his mouth
Twisted into a rictus as though
Words were rudely forced.
It was a code not to be violated, how he
Came up, the homies he hung with. He was
A good-looking kid but thin
And slight. I see him in
Pendleton flannel and jeans. He
Merged into a wall like indios around
Garrulous friends, the cholas more
Butch than the boys. Fernando
His Guatemalan buddy
Drove a senior van, a stand-up dad.
Luis straightened up
And flew right one day then
Disappeared to Phoenix the next. Abigail
Called him a child. Luis
Offered to show me his gun tattoo. I
Forget when it was he told me about
The felony arrest over his head
After he pulled a Glock on a U.S. marshal. It
Wasn’t the drogas he dealt that was
The addiction, Luis said. It was the green.
Richard Oyama’s work has appeared in Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry, The Nuyorasian Anthology, Breaking Silence, Dissident Song, A Gift of Tongues, About Place, Konch, Pirene’s Fountain, Malpais Review, Buddhist Poetry Review and other journals. He has a M.A. in English: Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. His first novel in a trilogy, A Riot Goin’ On, is forthcoming.
Image: Thomas Charters
Acid Rain Epithalamium
this isn’t the rain we asked for
it runs like lava down leeward
rocks, seizes the cities, it
looks like smoke sizzles
on pavement like hot grease
but might it still wed weeds
to soil might corn still marry
earth & sky in late july could
it still caress valleys soak
hollers dress mountains
in a technicolor coat of wild-
flowers temper flames
that torch the mountainsides
could the children still grow
healthy & tall soft-skinned
& singing to open acrid sky
this isn’t the rain we asked for
but it is the rain we’ve made
love to dropped to one
knee bound ourselves for life
this could be a celebration
windborn praise songs
crawling toward mountaintops
bodies dancing by moonlight
bring your pots to the bonfire
let us boil what drips off eaves-
troughs into our gaping mouths
Becca Downs is a poet, freelance writer, and MFA candidate with the Mile-High MFA program at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Her work will be published in the upcoming anthology Take The Fruit, Flood The Desert, and has previously been published in Sorry for the Inconvenience: an Anthology of Queer and Trans Voices, Flying Island Magazine, Glass Mountain, Ecletica, Jupiter Review, Heartland Society of Women Writers, genesis, and more. She enjoys hiking, exploring new places, and finding the best donuts wherever she travels.
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.
South Broadway Ghost Society 