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

Special Feature — Word Poems
Poems containing the words parallel, tide, knot, and lantern.

 

Special Feature — Weeds Poetry at the Hideout
Poetry from a Chicago open mic community.

 

Closed Casket (Spotlight Runner-Up!)
 
Luke,
locked inside the casket,
hiding the way he played tag
in his parents' backyard
 
Lisa McMonagle

 

Three Poems
 
This is not
a poem about my father's death
this past spring
 
LeeAnn Pickrell

 

For Now
 
We're the first
gay couple she has ever known, she says
often.
 
Kenneth Pobo

 

Drift
 
The bard-owl gathers snow,
sitting on his branch at dusk
 
Rachel Burns

 

Turning Fifty
 
no missed jump shots, no kids in trouble
with the law, no checks returned for lack of funds
 
Robert Joe Stout

 

The room is dark when I wake up this morning,
 
Yesterday I asked for an ending,
cried about a failed investment that cost us
nearly half our lives.
 
Jen Davis

 

Two Poems
 
From those concurrences,
place and time, affinity,
came the ached-for separation
 
Marjorie Mir

 

Adeline Ravoux Looks Back at the Night Van Gogh Shot Himself
 
He was calm and gentle,
and as steady as dusk, returning every day
before dark, never missing a meal.
 
Bob Bradshaw

 

Summer Solstice
 
although the buildings
and the street names have changed,
this place will never be one that
people might aspire to live in
 
Steven Deutsch