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

 

Special Feature — Word Poems
Poems containing the words bathrobe, plastic, juxtapose, and impediment.

 

Two Poems
 
They've spread her across the map.
She's got slits and holes where none should be.  
 
Corey Habbas

 

The Snake
 
What made me take my rage out into the world, who made me grab the shovel,
who had wounded me, brought up my oppression?  
 
Leonore Wilson

 

A Girl
 
the word for memory is written
in a long hand  
 
Eric Melbye

 

Ghosts and Mushroom Mulch
 
I have an urge to take off my clothes
roll in the humus sniff of summer  
 
Barbara De Franceschi

 

Two Poems
 
A strong rain beat the shingles.
Thunder rattled the walls.  
 
Jason Kelly Richards

 

Two Poems
 
Over a cup of tea and sectioned oranges
she contemplates paths she might take,
writing in longhand to slow her thinking  
 
Beebe Barksdale-Bruner

 

Two Poems
 
Slopes have a fleshy
hue. The nasty mizzle
is forever.  
 
Robert James Berry

 

Caregiver
 
Nausea perspires through my upper lip
as she tosses fruit, chicken liver,
poached eggs, wild rice in the blender  
 
Arlene Ang

 

Sky
 
The sky comes all the way down
to earth.
Or what do you call the space between?  
 
Stephanie Sesic

 

A Homecoming
 
Skathi, they said, you
chose, like all women do,
a man by his foot.  
 
Bojan Pavlovic

 

Night Along Front Street
 
Where is the walk out of here? How are heavy stones moved?
Listen for old seed deciding to flower.  
 
Alicia M. Howard

 

a driving instructor has a recurring nightmare
 
a strand of long black hair snakes around the corner, birds
stop singing mid-scale, a handful of leaves decide to jump.  
 
Michaela A. Gabriel

 

La Frontera
 
You wish for the salt sea humidity of other places farther south and also north, but in all cases where there is green and where things grow and bloom without coaxing.  
 
Christopher Lake

 

the brutal truth
 
this is less a poem
than a pink, twitching rock face.  
 
Ryan Bird

 

Two Poems
 
She thinks of an orange: of the sudden splash
of yellow, of seeds, of the sheer beauty of the spheres.  
 
Elizabeth Bruno