Poetry

Issue 38 2020 Prize winners
Papa (Bi-Polar) Bear

by Lila Dlaboha.
“You didn’t come to bed until morning /
You opened and closed doors all night /
while I slept in the ambient soot…”

Issue 13 Growing Older
The Old Man Washes His Boat, Ballycotton

by Elizabeth Biller Chapman.
“The old man/ plies his trade, his wages earned: a clean boat. / Is labor prayer?”

In the Briars

by Colleen McKee.
“As I walked to Lake Divine, I remembered I’d forgotten / To fill my pockets with rocks. I’m the type who forgets…”

The Initiation

by Alicia Ostriker.
“Boy, he said, you got to fill a graveyard /
before you know this business / and you just did / row one, plot one.”

Issue 36 2019 Prize Winners
Oystered

by Michele Parker Randall.
“Would that our breasts were like oysters. / Briny, lustrous. Maybe not filter feeders, / but that they could meditate on the grit / of suicidal cells that will become the nucleus / of a pearlescent globe.”

Issue 35 Displacement
A THREAD OF SUNLIGHT ON EURYDICE’S HEM

by Eric Pankey.
“Call it an exercise in restraint / The angle of ascent is sharp / Like the sloped ceiling…” 

Chronic Care: “Broken Leg” by Keith Carter, Photograph (Toned Gelatin Silver Print 1998)

by Laurie Clements Lambeth.
“The girl in black dress and tights stands behind the fawn, / hands clasped, their white blur forming almost / a heart.”

Issue 15 Abilities and Disabilities
Learning New Words

by Hal Sirowitz.
“one of the benefits of the disease –/
you learn new words. You / also learn new meanings for / old words.”

Issue 36 2019 Prize Winners
Particle

by Jan Bottiglieri.
“like light is / like my speckled skin: brim /
and brink. verge…”