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

 

Special Feature — Word Poems
Poems containing the words neighbor, blanket, anniversary, and eleven.

 

Three Poems (Spotlight Runner-Up!)
 
Today, my name is Houston
and I am a mission control prodigy.
 
Hannah Edwards

 

Three Poems
 
The shine of a bluebird rests
like warm rain on his tongue. Sumac climbs the fresh-painted neck
of the garden trellis. Day bristles open.
 
Matthew Gellman

 

Two Poems
 
The rage deflated
only at the street's end, amongst strangers
and chow mein.
 
Arjun Rajendran

 

Hunting Day
 
Ragged clouds of steamy exhalation float
like empty comic strip word balloons.
 
Scott Urban

 

Cut-Price Poetry
 
Every Tuesday she is here,
next to a Nikon ad,
threatening commuters
with her cyclostyled angst.
 
Alan Ireland

 

Camille Monet
 
Hadn't Claude chosen painting
over his world of business? Now this woman?
 
Bob Bradshaw

 

Is it any wonder?
 
Even the laissez faire
parenting norms of 50s and 60s
were beyond their means.
 
Greta Bolger

 

Two Poems
 
These, I discover, are not random details,
by no means this-or-that.
 
Marjorie Mir