by Sara Backer

As a toddler, I slapped the globe until it creaked
for the pure pleasure of spinning.

I flattened tangerine peels and learned how
canoe-shaped segments cloaked a sphere.

In school, there was a mechanical model
of the solar system, but the crank was stuck.

I asked my father which way the earth
revolved around the sun: clockwise or counter?

I needed to picture how the planets moved.
My father replied: “That depends where you are.”

His answer threw me
into a Milky Way of vantage points.

by Sara Backer

This is me,
your friend,
on the table
stripping.
Don't look
away.

You made
this table
what it is:
ate off it,
wrote on it,
bruised your hip
against it.
You made
it yours.

But I am
grinding hard,
peeling off
layers
of varnish,
getting down
to deep scars,
yours and
mine,
and I keep
stripping.

by Sara Backer

Ashes rise from trash.
Sparks break through the screen.
Snow blows from needles
of pines that reach up
while the sun burns down.

She chose to wear wool
instead of a house.
Fat, round icicles
sharpen in her mouth.
Papers twist and breathe.

In the wind tonight
cinders shrink quickly,
dark, cold, vanishing . . .
No one can see her
watching the fire float.

Published in Kaimana

210th Weekly Poetry Contest

by Ryan Stone

I drink all day
and then strike out
along that winding road,
where shadows flit
by leafy bough
and twilight waits
for no-one.

Failing light
births fickle fiends
who writhe and tempt
the absent mind.
In deepen wood
where mildew clings,
night’s cool breath
gives parting kiss

to seasons
long since flown.

210th Weekly Poetry Contest

by Regina

Clover and moss adornment
fields of ancient emerald mellow
with spring lambs innocent,
elderly farmer with a tea stained smile.

Yet, North of there,
her people warring,
life spills on concrete,
in the singing wind
are the songs of the Troubles.

My maiden, my Eire,
are you ever at rest?
Where are your children?
Sons and daughters,
youth no more to come home,
Scars on a beauty,
she, she,
will it go on into eternity?

by Agnieszka Filipek

niebo pęka
rzeki płyną krwią

żołnierze zalewają ziemię
śpiewając kołysankę

ich broń lśni
jak biżuteria

a pod stopami
anonimowe kości

Translation:

POPPIES

the sky cracks
rivers flow with blood

soldiers flood the earth
singing the lullaby

their weapons shining
like jewellery

and under their feet
anonymous bones

First published in The Stony Thursday Book

by Bruce Boston

At the age of fifty-five
I receive substantive evidence
for what I have known
since I have known
anything at all.

After X-raying my spine
my chiropractor blinks,
and blinks again.
"You have two extra ribs!"
she tells me. "And one
extra sacral vertebra!"

I am a freak of nature.
A mutant under the skin.
A skeletal overachiever.
That one in a million
and a half kind of guy.

by sprkzflyn

Awoken from dream
heard a gunshot and scream
out from under my cardboard box home
rowdy motley crew
across MAX light-rail tracks
in view of Rose Quarter
smells like skid-row spirit
drunkards with goofy glad grins
panhanlin' bearded-clad dads
in and out of Trail Blazers alley

209th Weekly Poetry Contest

by Miles T. Ranter

The people in the Middle Ages knew
the earth is round, but what they didn’t know
is that the cosmos swells like sourdough
and that a time would come when men peer through
thirteen billion years to see the glow
of fuzzy islands near the very brink
of all creation. Who would ever think
we’d hear its echo on the radio?

by Che Sara Sara

I hear there is a fat skunk, all white,
who waddles in the yard folowed by two kits
the men call babies.
I hear about a pair of chipmunks and raccoons
that hang around the kitchen after chow.
A hummingbird appears some mornings,
a gray-tailed hawk at noon,
and at night, feeding on mosquitoes, bats carve
dark curves in the darkening sky.