(These are excerpts—click on the titles to view the complete poems)

 

Special Feature — Word Poems
Poems containing the words iron, paper, sundial, and doctor.

 

Strange Land
 
each morning we emigrate
our fermenting lunchboxes
ripe with foreign stink
 
Erica Goss

 

Apoptosis
 
Our dendrites branch out
trying to touch other dendrites
 
Laura Bender

 

Two Poems
 
He seems so harmless, now: one more broken body at the grocery store.
 
Jeff Alan

 

Three Poems
 
so I emanate frankincense
as we ride out from the ruins
at Sumharam
 
Nic Sebastian

 

Sweet William, Poison Ivy
 
Machiavelli's mythic Prince is a sumac
with poisonous attributes.
 
Oliver Rice

 

The Death of Pushkar Lake
 
floating hills
floating, misty mornings
floating birds
 
Shweta S. Banerjee

 

Three Poems
 
I sat next to a devil on a plane— he offered me his snuff box.
 
Timothy Kercher

 

Familiarity
 
Half of her flailing is only a grasp for balance.
This will not end well.
 
Ken Poyner

 

Friday Afternoon Circle Play
 
They frame their questions anew in chant, which becomes accusation,
then declaration: Feter iz a goy! Feter iz a goy!
 
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

 

The Gulls: A Ghazal
 
The gulls swoop and scream; I wonder if they want sex.
Mothers lead their cherub-children into the brown sea.
 
Vanessa Blakeslee

 

For a Girl Whose Name I Can't Quite Remember
 
I never ventured from my end of the room
To hers, where she sat, legs pinched together
 
James Valvis

 

bacon
 
this carnage means
nothing to him
but a paycheck
 
John Grochalski