(Click on the titles to view the poems)

 

Special Feature — Word Poems
Poems containing the words rabbit, heaven, immune, and brick.
Includes a special invitation for the next issue.

 

Two Poems
 
Women like to measure
with some accuracy. Men
estimate, always toss in more
than is called for.  
 
John Reinhard

 

Three Poems
 
This closed room spins
with sparrows and finches swarming
the quick walls.  
 
Rob Yeatman

 

Two Poems
 
Why should I blame the war? The war
did not betray my trust. I never trusted it.
The war did not forsake my bed.  
 
Oswald LeWinter

 

Two Poems
 
There were tricks
that fooled with a practiced ruse,
the plant in a crowd,
the trapdoor stage  
 
Nicholas Hogg

 

Two Poems
 
These trees
do not remember joy—
this mountain ash, that
purple one with leaves like coins.  
 
Judy Goodwin

 

In Observance
 
Your skin is crepe ivory,
but the lines run the same, elegantly
veined like the marble in the church
you taught me to live for.  
 
Rosa Garza

 

Menos Mal (Good Thing)
 
Good thing your dark hair
matches my Castilian
poems  
 
Beatríz Cedillo

 

The Matter Before Committee: Three Poems
 
The lump of papers on my desk is
a jumble of blame.
I wasn't there. How can I know?  
 
Susan H. Case

 

Passed times
 
I never met a cowboy I couldn't live without,
their sun-dark bluster and hand-rolled cigarettes.  
 
Shann Palmer

 

Two Poems
 
In this world of ambiguous light,
what do you make of the hour?
What do you say about these last days?  
 
Steve Mueske

 

Before the Downpour
 
I think of gutters
clogged with pressed leaves,
and raindrops crawling
on torn screens.  
 
Joseph Brunetti

 

Three Poems
 
Uncomplicated, our lives shone
clear as light in blue cups  
 
David Ayers

 

landscape, fading
 
i am a believer in the horizon
and in the powerlines that
trace the flatness of it  
 
john sweet

 

ghazal
 
excuse me every time he says that word i think
back to when
i was sixteen and my constant dream
was going to africa  
 
James Lineberger

 

Beauty of the Bones
 
Give me
your backbone
straight-arrow,
your ribcage
circling birdless  
 
Linda Sue Grimes

 

Crazy For You
 
Listen to all your plans
Slip through your lips,
And all the laments—
Your dad, your mom, your heavy sis  
 
Alec Solomita

 

Two Poems
 
Harvest time was a weekend
in your kitchen,
jalousie windows cranked open
in a futile attempt
to circulate Floridian air.  
 
Theresa Boyar

 

Two Poems
 
I did not understand the meaning of seed,
how a thin line of cord could connect or destroy.
You were a slight shudder below a rib,
the soft shape of leg, a sudden kick.  
 
T.E. Ballard

 

Zones of Gray
 
I hung the photo on the wall,
my former wife, exposed.
Yosemite. Black and white film.
Fiber-based, acid free paper. Archival.  
 
Sandy Steinman