CLIFF FORSHAW
What was your name? Who traced your frozen charm? / Your body’s with us still: you have no face. // Was it soft, or haughty? Tender, fearful, calm? / We’ll never know if it equalled the way your stance / tips a half-cradled breast from your folded arm.

CLIFF FORSHAW
Hurl or Hole? Some sunless Scandi burg,/ no doubt. As for lingos I don’t sprack much;/ do sniff iffy drains and hear them gurgle:

MAURICE EMERSON DECAUL, VALERIE DUFF, CLIFF FORSHAW, LUISA A. IGLORIA, TESS TAYLOR
New to country stars, you try/ to identify the constellations./ Cassiopeia, Andromeda—

You forget their stories.

AMY LAWLESS, NATHANIEL BELLOWS, PAUL KANE, SARAH LONDON, CLIFF FORSHAW
Let me learn the layout, factor and/ figure into this place. The rain accosts/ the crags as shifting mist, blurring, then/ ballooning the skeletal vista. Let spattered/ facets on the windowpane bring clarity./ Where is the weakness in this request?

AMY LAWLESS, JONATHAN MOODY, ELIZABETH HAZEN, ISHION HUTCHINSON, R. ZAMORA LINMARK, SARAH WELLS, CLIFF FORSHAW
Two cactus branches pointed at different suns/ who’s right who’s wrong?/ myself evaporating: minute turns into other minutes –/ the minutes of later minutes later/ pooling into an hour, a puddle/ two things to do on this day

CURTIS BAUER, JANE SATTERFIELD, NORMAN LOCK, CLIFF FORSHAW, CATHERINE STAPLES
The knife in your hand wants flesh—/ its appetite for blood is sharp steel/ leaning, weeping into the tomato’s meat,/ sugar beets, steaming rhubarb pie—

Sunset in Herring CoveBy YEHUDIT BEN-ZVI HELLER    The  puzzle  of  the  sun’s  longing  for the  sea The  marvel:  her  love  fills  the  sky  overflows  the  rim  till the sea  is  one with  the  sky The  sun  like  Dido  in  flames melts  into  the  water in  a  hiss  that  breaks  waves  into  bubbles  into  shards  which

Please enjoy five new poems by our contributors.

The Governor built his prisons,
but he built his chapels, too.
Now the Lamb of God beams down
in light that’s brightly stained,
right foreleg implausibly curled
around a regimental flag.

All day those stones have writhed with myth,
roots have snaked necks, have had the cheek
to prod gods and kings, crack armies, cities, ships;
mocked Shiva, made him sprout arthritic wrists.