(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
 

Special Feature — Word Poems

Poems containing the words park, sugar, storm, and river.
 

Butterfly Pose
(Spotlight Runner-Up!)

After the fires
I feared
I'd never see
another monarch

Erica Goss
 

Four Qasidas of Desperation

will your bloodless shouts echo, re-witlessly echo,
& bash at your temples with a maddening thump

David Jalajel
 

My mood is as punctual and unstable as the tide

I'm tired of holding the end of the world
in my half-opened palm, an offering
that goes unheard or unheeded

Shyla Ann Shehan
 

A trajectory of letting go

Your silence is a mask
it says, and the real
is just a skein of blue

Peter Grandbois
 

Scopophilia

Come to me as you are,
between bruise and bloom.

Stephanie Karas