(Click on the title to view the whole poem!)

 

Special Feature — Word Poems
 
Poems containing the words rescued, minority, cashew, and bonnet.
Includes a special invitation for the next issue.

 

Six Poems
 
Fourteen, tops, she's the kind of pretty
they paste false lashes on and falsies,
splash over the cover of Cosmo;
the kind of creamy-pretty men love to spoil.  
 
Tania Rochelle

 

Three Poems
 
like violet muddled in, we practiced
stillness impossible for men, struck as we were
by love, and by the moonlit pastels
lovers turned for us  
 
Robert Lietz

 

Three Poems
 
pale
as sand
under a cloud-veiled moon
my lover
moves through the night  
 
Allen Itz

 

Three Poems
 
I remember when the legs of girls
Who swam in pale orange ponds shadowed by gum trees
Were with their curves and knees
The most precious things I had ever seen.  
 
Duane Locke

 

Three Poems
 
Draped with seaweed, the monsters of the night
lift their heads like sad waterlilies
I have lost my dreams at the bottom of the lake.  
 
Anne Kellas

 

Two Poems
 
The cement life cast of my neurosis
Came out surprisingly real.
However, someone put heart stickers over my boobies--again.  
 
Leigh White

 

Bonfires
 
As a child I knew a word for
this
rising-unfurling-becoming light
as a child I knew the words of true
prayer.  
 
Shannon Bell

 

Nocturne
 
Wrangler shorts frayed at the cheekline.
Colt .45 mute in its holster.
Mauled by brambles in her halter
Tracker Jill has lost the scent.  
 
Christian Peet

 

Blue Print
 
I give you
shishkebab of heart, smoking,
speared on a spit;  
 
Ben Passikoff

 

Cast Away
 
After her companion
disappears, my abandoned
pet snake coils around
the molted skin her mate left  
 
James Whitley

 

A Different Sameness
 

a streetlamp
blankets sixth avenue
like a bonfire, paints
a fleck of morning
on her arms  
 
Alex Stolis

 

Trains
 
a train
is not exactly
made of steel,
smoke and iron are not its soul  
 
Vincent Canizaro