TONY BARNSTONE
“Descartes installed the eyeball of an ox / in a small hole through which the daylight sprayed / inverted figures of the world’s parade”
True Rhyme
JEHANNE DUBROW
“I walk to Safeway where the air stays on / and wander through the frozen foods, the cold / glass coffins”
STEPHEN KAMPA
“Beloved woman, beautiful and scared”
JUDITH KUNST
“At twelve, she saw so little and so much / in seven stars”
RYAN WILSON
“He’s happiest on weekends in the fall, / Those quiet afternoons”
PHILIP DACEY
“She sits as if before the stillest lake”
LIZ AHL
“Who showed you which trees to cut down or to keep? / The father who sang you down into your sleep.”
QUINCY R. LEHR
“There’s thudding from the floor above that never seems to stop. / I’m trying to sleep, or waiting for the other shoe to drop”
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”
BARBARA LOOTS
“He bows over the board to hone the line / from stem to stern along a subtle curve / that instinct and intelligence define.”
HANNAH FAITH NOTESS
“Moved up the river to a ghostless house. / Hung out the Monday washing in the breeze.”
GWEN HART
“I have grown accustomed to his hands”
CAKI WILKINSON
“When neon ginkgoes fan the window panes / and sycamores unroll their yellow sleeves”
WILLIAM F. BELL
“I don’t know by what happy omen / A creature from the past came by”
MILES DAVID MOORE
“The headstones that withstood / A thousand storms and snows”
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.”
