If you would like to participate in the next special poetry assignment, the four words are whisper, eight, espresso, and parallel. Send your poem to editors@eclectica.org by June 1, 2001.

Willing

You think about peaches
on the windowsill and their velvet
skin and how it wouldn't hurt
if you bit into one right now

Julie King

Now how 'bout this

Jeannie’s got herself
pregnant again. Yeah, still no husband.
No-one wants fat pressin’ them down,
so as to make them parta the bed.

Tara Brever

Sideshow Jo

Those shanties streaking by must look like home,
gray and splintered like her mother’s hair.
I heard the woman once weaved a hat for Jo
with their pregnant collie’s fur

Natalie Kring

Winter Carnival

You never knew how I met him
in the wood one day, carried his animal
scent home in my hair, my basket,
the folds of my red cloak

Jennifer Finstrom

Playing for Keeps

Will she dip
once more into the little
bag, exchange what she
considers nothing
for something
to give her hope?

Amy Crane Johnson

Life by the Drop

Music pours out the jukebox velvety, coating
bottles and perching dew-drops on the pool table
felt, humidifying the desert air that drifts
through the open windows and doors

Tom Dooley