SANDRA SHAFFER VANDOREN
“Motionless as herons, snipers stare, / their long, slick beaks of guns all pointing down”
Sonnet
MATTHEW MCLAUGHLIN MALYON
“The open coffin waited in the room, / a stone in ocean tide”
BRUCE MCBIRNEY
“It happens quickly every Friday night. / The deepest feelings, the profound events / Of thirty years are gathered up in light / Upon a movie screen. “
DANA SONNENSCHEIN
“The hillside held in shadows’ branching net / and the reservoir in wave-splashed ice resound / when swans rise, kicking, scattering light”
SHANE SEELY
“Ray claims he saw you with his own two eyes”
ROBERT DONOHUE
“In lonely moments it may come to mind / To brush away the cobweb’s veil”
GINNY KACZMAREK
“The piercing ice of winter never ends / when you’re away.”
ALLISON JOSEPH
“If waves could wash away my sins in life— / all errors, indiscretions, and the blight / of caustic words”
ROBERT W. CRAWFORD
Winner of the 2006 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award
“The tourists take a snapshot of the sight — / But only if nobody’s sitting there.”
WILLIAM BREEN
“Me sad. Me who love cookie cannot taste / with tongue of felt to cardboard pasted flat.”
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Translation by Robert Mezey and Richard Barnes
“Snow fallen on Northumberland has known / And forgotten every footprint that you made”
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Translation by Robert Mezey and Richard Barnes
“If sleep is truce, as it is sometimes said”
TONY BARNESTONE
“A man swings through the open doors on crutches, / his long arms thick with muscle like the Christ”
X. J. KENNEDY
“With thoughtful steps she made sure that no friend / Would catch the drift of what she planned to do”
ANNA EVANS
“I cast you as the main romantic lead / in what I always knew was just a play”
JAMES J. BARNES
“We learn our grief like any human art”
SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ
Translation by Rhina P. Espaillat
“Fantasy builds a cell you cannot cheat.”
