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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

Honorable mentions: 1st Honorable Mention: “For Albert” by Joan Dobbie, Eugene, OR 2nd Honorable Mention: “Death of an Archaeologist” Marri Champié, Kuna, ID 3rd Honorable Mention: “Kaizen” by Sue Parman, Hillsboro, OR     Judge’s comments I think every judge speaks to how difficult it is to select poems for a contest. I can only

Coals by Welkin Azure   This time she sits quietly and observes them all at march. Step-falls a creaking drum, arms swishing become as tongue, the movement and the gathering bring closer the arrived. A resembling that there was and that which takes its place. She giggles now, filling us with want, desire for the

the cherries were ripe by Linda Golaszewski   the cherries were ripe near a lake big enough to be touched by tides. Cherries bent low, full no one else had picked them no one knows ripeness anymore how red the fruit can get when dead ready to be picked, the kids scattered to free the

Crow Proprietors by Judy Richardson   Before eight in the morning there is only myself in the park and a dozen crows near the trail, another thirty or so in the distance. I like how sometimes a group of them will burst like benign buckshot from one tree to another, at last settling in tiers

Honorable mentions: 1st Honorable Mention: “Pocket Change” by Ward Anderson, Ashland, OR 2nd Honorable Mention: “Pie and Coffee” by Donna McNeil, Springfield, OR 3rd Honorable Mention: “Gastropoda Magnifico” by Julie K. Caulfield, Beaverton, OR     Judge’s comments The poems in the “New Poet” category were impressive and explored a wide array of themes. I

Ghazal in June by Louise Barden   In summer heat your body wants to feel the wind until you wish that you could steal the wind.   The world’s a fragrant orange, sweet and juicy ripe, the scent you catch under its tender peel, the wind.   This hour has brought green leaf and purple