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

Special Feature — Word Poems

Poems containing the words hope, walk, sugar, and sky.
 

Three Japanese Forms

We pointy-headed
intellectuals, put down
books, take up shotguns

Gerard Sarnat
 

Tonight, I bid them all a crowned farewell (4/17/2020)

(Spotlight Runner-Up!)

Fatal lightning striking all over
our planet, corkscrew fear.

Diane Sahms
 

Iceland

Duck's feet, arrows on the snow,
mirrored a child's game
that we didn't know.

Alan Humm
 

Kitchen World

Solids are whisked up into gases that
melt to liquid in your mouth.
This is the world I love.

Rebecca Longenecker
 

blues

the black-line base of it soothes my black Madonna throat

Claretta Holsey
 

The Genius of Men

Satiated to the edge of sickness
Like too much cotton candy at the fair

Joanna Collins
 

Raising Mothers

She is lost inside the land
of it makes no difference if it's day or night.

Bridget Bell
 

Birds on a Wire

Beneath them electricity pulses,
turning on computers
and dishwashers all over town

Claudia Buckholts
 

Painted Whale

She is the captain of the deep,
the longest swimmer, the warmest,
and the most intelligent

Rachel Aviva Burns
 

Flame

No, tonight I will make something of myself.

Carol Barrett
 

Sparrow

Nothing changes in the world when I say
Vesper Sparrow

Sharon McDermott