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Cross-Country Bus by Charlotte Abernathy   Miles beyond midnight, beyond another state line, past service station signs glaring from high pylons, beyond remnants of a weary town, one last overhead reading light clicks off. In the dark, drowsy voices merge with the droning motor, the roaring tires. Cold window glass rumbles hard against my forehead

Muggins Discovers His New Boundaries by Dave Harvey   Full of years when we moved here, he took to the back yard like an old soldier, patrolled his post, lolled in the summer sun (working on his kitty-tan).   Then a foreign cat came in, and Muggins, deep-dyed chauvinist about foreign cats, launched a silent

Something There Is by Kim Hamilton   They plead latitude document 13 article A hand the map of scars back   folded in your lap at crossing the green skin   was a prayer you made with your feet and stayed there.       Judge’s comments I was drawn to the category, Borders and

Honorable mentions: 1st Honorable Mention: “Crossing” by Helen Puciloski, Rainier, OR 2nd Honorable Mention: “Territory” by Cynthia Jacobi, Newport, OR 3rd Honorable Mention: “Unfinished Things” by Marvin Lurie, Portland, OR     Judge’s comments I was drawn to the category, Borders and Boundaries, because it is a subject that I ponder often and I often

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do by Hanna Litwinowicz   I fail to acknowledge the car’s on fire Got me where I am, radio’s still on Our parts lacked components the machine required Perhaps, me and you sweetie, same things gone No bare-leg runs, daisies cut tac-toe-tics You didn’t hear my heart across the room

Sonnet for the 25th Wedding Anniversary by Carolyn Martin   She came to me in the rain. ­—James Wright, “Sappho”   What a silly thing to do, this Memory without umbrella or boots, slipping through the drenching afternoon, reminding me of early loves I filed away. A few titled puppy-ish lined with clipped good-byes, slamming

We Can Always Talk about the Weather by Alida Rol   Bleached coral moans in rising seas, while parched Lake Chad sighs memories of millet, maize, and bottle gourds, of homes on unscorched earth. Daily, somewhere, raging floods rephrase the mud, emend topography, splinter lean-tos, drown the hapless, inspire throngs of refugees. Tainted air, imprinted