by Elizabeth Penrose

Väinämöinen
and the Singing Fish
by Marissa K. Lingen

Praxitales
by Nye Joell Hardy

Walking Across The Bomb
by Alexandra MacKenzie

The Green Infinity
by Camille Alexa

The Night The Stars
Sang Out My Name
by Ken Scholes

Odysseus on the War Train
by Rose Lemberg

Side Show Sally
by Tracie McBride

Hives
by Elizabeth Penrose

3 Poems Called Cosmic
by JM McDermott

Think
by Suzanne Sykora

Pavlov's Best Friend
by Kristine Ong Muslim

Short Form Set:
Shears,
by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
Two Haiku,
by Francis W. Alexander
LIONS & TIGERS & BEARS,
by Kendall Evans

]

My babysitter told me she had hives
And showed me a hole in the palm of her hand
Where bees kept going out and coming in,
Their yellow fuzz bright against pink skin.
Then she lifted her dress hem and showed me her thigh
Where a knot of the insects pushed against her nylons
And worried the shining network of threads.
She let me snuggle in fearfully, past hand and leg
As we lay down on my living room floor.
I rested my head upon her breast
To hear the great murmur within her body:
Whole chambers of workers and knots of nestlings
Buzzing around blood vessels and below each organ,
And the queen herself ticked out eggs
In a honeycomb beneath my babysitter's heart.
She was a sweet girl to show me that,
But I could never forget, in all our gentle hours,
The angry rattle that went through her.