E. M. KOMISAR
“She found her faith in static broadcast stations, / The grainiest and blurriest were best”
Pentameter
AMIT MAJMUDAR
“How does he square his fiddling with rhymes / with such unbearably precarious times”
AMIT MAJMUDAR
“Caterpillars build their bunkers out / of terror.”
SCOTT RAY
“We smelled the smoke before we saw the fire”
JOHN POCH
“Don’t touch it yet. The gun is not a toy. / This isn’t home, or church, or work, or school”
QUINCY R. LEHR
“That was one more year of America, / a smoking fuselage that never crashes”
PEDRO POITEVIN
“I will remain here on the sidelines where / each Saturday I witness my son glide / over slide tackles with a cocky stride .”
DAVID ROSENTHAL
“You’ll come across it in some database– / an arcane list, an ancient family tree– / a ghost town on the edge of cyberspace”
JOHN PHILIP DRURY
“‘Ever the best of friends,’ your letters ended, / great expectations for a wave of years / that promised more reunions, correspondence. / But all that’s over.”
QUINCY R. LEHR
“Up late. The wife asleep, the laptop screen / a nightlight of sorts, I semi-surf the web— / a Twitter deep dive—another angry teen / was shocked by murder into eloquence.”
JEAN L. KREILING
“The palette loses warmth: the hair gone gray, / the teeth not quite so white”
MARYANN CORBETT
“Perfect: the singers, strings, and keyboards. Perfect // Bruised sky above the tents of the squatters’ district”
RICHARD WAKEFIELD
“An old man at his kitchen window sees / by winter light”
STEPHEN KAMPA
“Beloved woman, beautiful and scared”
RYAN WILSON
“He’s happiest on weekends in the fall, / Those quiet afternoons”
PHILIP DACEY
“She sits as if before the stillest lake”
MORI CREECH
“I struck the match. My child watched dead leaves burn”
CELESTE LIPKES
“In bed, I shake the world by turning glass. / I twist the plastic tube and shut one eye; / I watch the people break apart and pass”
