oregonpoetry

Baby, It’s Cold Outside (a Vivianne sonnet variation) Barbara Blanks As embryos we each explore the wall of womb that holds us. It’s the first place joy is felt—mom’s heartbeat like a lullaby.   Cocooned in touch, that’s how we interact. We’re chastised just as soon as we can crawl or walk. Just look! Hands off!

Arachnidæa: Line Drawings Stephen Pollock I. Extravagance at dawn  — your finest threads are strung with pearls and you, a brooch with a clasp. Magnify the shiny spheres to divine that each conceals a miniature, an image of struggling wings, of life undone. Pass at the critical angle, and they flash and snap in the

Mind Gloss David Hedges Mind in its purest play is like some bat That beats about in caverns all alone, Contriving by a kind of senseless wit Not to conclude against a wall of stone. —Richard Wilbur, from “Mind” Mind in its purest play is like some bat That magically connects with knuckleballs. No matter

Judged by Lynn Otto 1st Honorable Mention: “Missing” by Suzanne Sigafoos, Portland, OR 2nd Honorable Mention: “Women’s Day at Sauna” by Michelle Williams, Portland, OR 3rd Honorable Mention: “Facing Backward on the Train” by Dan Kaufman, Central Point, OR Thank you to all who submitted poems. Reading them while practicing social distancing to prevent the

Cradling Dad Cathy Cain I hooked up to the galaxy of the centrifuge my milky platelets swirling like stars like swifts into the chimney of night I held the dream of him the rhythm of his breath how he loved the Milky Way how he needed the stars     then the swift dark wind those stars

Framing Don Kunz        You build a world from fragments: A row of decaying Brownstones, An empty street in the morning rain, A mud-spattered, much-battered tailgate. You can’t zoom out enough to frame: That half-acre Banyan tree in Lahaina, That treaty site at Medicine Lodge Creek, That macaque colony reclining on Gibraltar. You focus on