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

 

Special Feature — Word Poems
Poems containing the words azalea, labor, hollow, and loss.

 

Two Poems
 
Things not missed
in all that time
Resurface now, like a last kiss
 
Jared Carter

 

My Wishing Star on a Long Ride
 
I had all I ever wanted, at thirteen:
my own horse and a long August.
 
Rachel Dacus

 

Gumbo
 
Heat in a slow cooker
on low for 23 years.
 
Quintin Collins

 

Subject: (no subject)
 
It's not my fault
your cubicle is all 5 years of college bought you
 
Steve Bogdaniec

 

Hello Urban Universe
 
my mother is beating
an egg by the moonlight
swelling on her countertop
 
Keith Gaboury

 

World’s Strongest Man Called Upon to Lift Sleep
 
Sleep has no handles. How do you get a grip on it?
 
E.M. Schorb

 

Van Gogh: Last Weeks at Auvers
 
First there was restlessness,
then a few bad dreams.
 
Bob Bradshaw

 

Behind Open Doors
 
I feel like temporary family
brought in off the streets of Catalina De Guines
to share a common heave.
 
Barbara De Franceschi

 

Sensations
 
I knew then when snow was coming,
ate it when it came.
 
Marjorie Mir