Coming Soon in 2023!

Submissions for the 2016 Editor's Choice Contest are now open!!

THE RESULTS ARE IN!!!

AND THE WINNER IS . . . 

WE DRAW A BATH BY JONATHAN GREENHAUSE:


We Draw a Bath

then erase it, paint stars upon the sky     then watch
as they raze the canvas.

We keep to ourselves
& are consumed by our loneliness,     each step we take

getting us to where we were going    one step too late.
Each song we compose

is impossible to sing.
Each war we wage     spawns a future conflict in its belly.

Each word we choose    reminds us of diction's limits.
We finally secure our freedom

but keep our chains in the closet,
& being certain of our mistakes,     we set to repeat them.

We discard our old friends    assuming we'll make new ones
but slip on our tongues

& fall victim to our sentences.
Burying ourselves in metaphors,    we reveal ourselves further,

how we're mountains     holding little sway over valleys
yet are still connected,

following the direction of our souls
without detecting them.  Each new accomplishment

take us farther from our beginnings.    Each god we invent
soon shows its restrictions,

& each calamity we survive
is a fleeting cause for celebration:     We close our eyes

but only see our eyelids;  & as hard as we swallow,
we hardly taste our pride.

                                  -- Jonathan Greenhause




SECOND PLACE GOES TO . . . 

PROUST IN THE PARK BY MICHAEL MAGEE:


Proust in the Park

Making my rounds, I saw him today
puffing on his pipe, tie pin
secure and talking to the squirrels
as if he owned the place.

His shoes were brightly polished
and if I looked there I could see
his face, intelligent, aristocratic
his hands delicate, his moustache

neatly brushed, top-buttoned overcoat
stiff collar, wearing a bowler hat.
He seemed to be memorizing
the names of the trees:  Red Oak,

Cypress, Norway Maple, Caucasian
Ash and his favorite, the Paper
Birch.  He stripped off the bark
began to write, noting the sky.

Light askance, he cataloged
every bird:  The purple thrush,
chickadee and lark, what a figure
he cut--so debonair--his patent

leather hair in place--I thought:
this must be his day off away
from the gossip of women and men
with their tiresome self-importance.

Observing the corrugated pond:
Lord and Lady Mallard the Shovellers
turning in tight circles like society
divas and debutantes.

How each Cedar Waxwing passes
along a berry to the next until they're fed,
like a cocktail party where everyone
demurely leaves their olive to the last.

How much to find in nature, what it
says about the man--how he must
return to dip his Madeleine in tea
and watch it melt away like pretense.

He passed the time looking at
his watch as though every minute
counted:  past, present, and future.
All time rolled into one tense.

               -- Michael Magee




THIRD PLACE GOES TO . . . 

STRIKING THE WHALE BY ELAINA ANNA FRULLA


Striking the Whale

"Ahab does not imitate the whale, he becomes Moby-
Dick, he enters into the zone of proximity where he
can no longer be distinguished from Moby-Dick, and 
strikes himself in striking the whale."

                        -- Gilles Deleuze, Essays Clinical and Critical

"but if I know not even the tail of this whale, how
understand his head?  much more, how comprehend
his face when face he has none?"

                        -- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

The monster rises and sinks in waves.
Smooth, round, bulbous mound
Heaves.

Ambiguous form rolls,
Protrudes from linen waves.

I stare from the darkness of the doorway.
I over-focus.
I strain.
I see only ambiguous form in the darkness.
I struggle to tear my gaze away from the heaving monster.
I step closer.
I am heaving.

Alien form,
Unfamiliar.
Embedded in the gut of a familiar body.
It struggles to tear away from my mother's
Familiar body.

I stab solid fists into the heaving monster
In ambiguous darkness.

My mother screams.

I am heaving.

The monster thrusts my away,
Effortless.
The corner of the solid nightstand stabs.

I feel fluid movement spread over my face.
I face the alien form lacking a face.
I envision ambiguous movement of blood spread over fabric.

Fluid movement from my mother's
Vaginal opening.

We are heaving,
Heaving.

                      -- Elaina Anna Frulla



OUR TWO HONORABLE MENTIONS ARE . . . 

[BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL] BY KRISTEN ORLANDO
&
WHAT'S IN THE CARDS BY PEG DUTHIE:


[beautiful, beautiful]

You would have put those words together
beautiful beautiful
as though the words were brush strokes.
I see you every time I see the blank white space.
You twist the screw of the easel top.
You step back.
You squint.
You see something that is not there
and you reckon with the canvas
the way a sculptor reckons marble,
leaning in as though you could hear voices
from the ordinary surface
telling your palette knife to pile the paint on.

I have a painting in my living room
with your signature,
a still life, a tablescape really,
that I found by accident
years after you had gone.
It is a mistake, I think,
because it is unfinished
and you slashed it with cerulean paint--
as if you had changed your mind before you were done with it,
crossed it out, turned it over,
painted the scene outside your window instead.

For years I hung the landscape, framed.
Then, one day, as if I heard the voices from the paper
I took the landscape, whose washed out watercolor shades
hesitated to declare themselves against the pale sky, from its frame
and turned it over,
found the bolder vase, the bowl, the drape--
and I whispered beautiful beautiful.

                                -- Kristen Orlando



What's in the Cards

During my shifts at the children's hospital
I wash decks of Uno, Apples to Apples,
Old Maids, Go Fishes--whisking bleach wipes
across the edges, faces, and backs.
Sometimes the ink bleeds onto the towels,
its smears resembling the ghosts of fugitive crayons.

So many colors escape their boxes here.
They roll beneath the floors of plastic buses.
They nestle among the eyes of Potato Heads.
They sneak into the fading trousseaux
of similarly sanitized worse-for-the-wear Barbies.

Sometimes the cards land on my counter
glued to one another.  Things one could blame:
a dribble of juice, a splash of Coke,
even the cleaning solution.  The sullenest striper
who so much wants to be elsewhere
doesn't wait until the jokers are dry
to shove them back into the cartons.

The cards on the cart are sometimes past repair.
Sometimes within a deck
too many cards go missing.
Once I found a Card Against Humanity
marking "Lazy Laurence" inside Little Women
and later a Hello Kitty's Crazy 8
snuggled against a lime-green stub of wax
snoozing behind Potato-Head shades.  Sometimes
before I cast such strays into the trash,
if no one else is in the playroom,
I stand them against the picture window--
disfigured queens, blurred-out numbers,
eyeless fish--and tell them about
the magic tricks I used to attempt:
the scratching, waxing, shaving, pricking,
and putting the cards into special sequences
to yield the happy endings I'd promised to provide.

                             -- Peg Duthie




AND THE REST OF THE FINALISTS ARE . . .



Jill and the Beanstalk by Peg Duthie
Arranged by Shawn Aveningo
The Search by Jo Simons
Return to Seville from Fields South of Camas by Jeffrey Alfier
Now You See It . . . by Carol Alena Aronoff
What We Take Home from McCormick Hotel Cafe by Jeffrey Alfier
Lover's Year-End Fiscal Report by Jo Simons
Wild Berry by Jude Neale
Zen Diagram VI by Gloria Keeley
Hidden Seasons by Peg Duthie
Softly by Carol Alena Aronoff
The Boy Who Cried Wolf Marries Red Riding Hood by Joseph Dorazio
Fugitive by Jeffrey Alfier
Palm Ocean Sailing by Travis Naught
I Am Not Sharing by Rick Ratliff
The Dead Man's Watch by Mharlyn Merritt

Submissions Have Re-Opened!!!!

Submissions are now open for the 2015 Editor's Choice Award!

Deadline: December 31, 2015

The Results Are In!!!!

The Winner is . . . 

Scavenger Hunt by Donna Barkman . . .

Scavenger Hunt

The boy was devising a game for his father

who might soon wake from a nap, his third that day.

He called his son the boy since the surgeon’s

knife had sliced most names from his memory. The boy

called his father Mr. Gus when they were playing pirates.

 

In his best first-grade printing, he wrote instructions on

small squares of paper for Mr. Gus to find the treasure chest:

“Number 1: Go to the Bathroom.”  He smiled at his joke

and placed a second note on the toilet tank: “Go to the Bedroom.” 

a third: “Living Room.” Yes.  “Go to the Living Room.”

He knew his mother would help Mr. Gus read the clues.  

Number 4: “Kitchen.” 

Number 5: “Tree House Ladder.” 

Number 6: “Ship,” -- the derelict porch at the back of the house,

loaded with all that a seagoing scalawag could hope for. 

In time, Mr. Gus found the boy’s cherished booty: bits of sea glass,

polished stones, foreign coins, and his great-aunt Jane’s

discarded pearls and brooches. 

They’re yours, Mr. Gus.  All for you!

Mr. Gus loved the boy with all his heart and soul.  He knew

where his heart was and could even find his pulse points,

but wondered obsessively about his soul:  Was it there

behind his eyes, floating in the reservoir of tears? 

Perhaps in his throat that clutched when the boy piped

sea chanteys they’d sung together.  Maybe in his gut,

where he would shit it out as a last angry act.  Or his lungs

where it could leave in the death rattle he knew was approaching. 

He tried to picture it hovering somewhere in a never-never-land

until it was joined by the boy’s, decades hence. 

He heard the boy calling and found him standing on the toilet lid,

rummaging through the medicine cabinet above, pulling out

bottles and tubes and vials. 

This is what the doctor will do, the boy shouted. 

She’ll go through all the pills in her closet and way at the back,

she’ll find the ones that will fix your sickness, his voice

bounding from the walls.

Their blue eyes met in a gaze of longing and possibility.  The boy

touched his father’s grizzled face, then he jumped to the floor.

 

Wanna play swordfight, Mr. Gus? he asked.  I’ll find the cutlass,

and he ran from the room. 

Second Place is . . . 

Visitation Tuesday by Denise Weuve . . .

Visitation Tuesday

Women in tattered sweat pants,

swallowed by thread-bare t-shirts nest

outside the  visitor entrance

waiting  to  see their papis,

         babies,

         better halves,

         soul-inmates. 

The chica beside me tosses her brass blonde 

feathered hair, grabs the spaghetti

strap of my cerulean dress,  This ain’t a ball sister. 

         Don’t look at our men.

Her doorknocker earrings swing,

a caged bird’s empty

perch.  There are no windows inside. 

No way for them to see airplanes

soar, with vultures and families

escaping this dried up town. 

To the left a mother, her son

no longer legally a child, confined

behind 2 inches of Plexiglas,

cries, picks up the phone, toys

with the cord that links them. 

He is the only detainee

unable to hold his visitor. 

Her hand flutters, grazing the cage

that took 20 years

to build.  In Colorado, guards shoot

crows during target practice

then serve them for dinner to inmates.

Visitors are ruffled, frisked,

then released to an open room of their men—

the well-behaved, in white jumpsuits.

He is in orange

Baby I have missed you so much. 

You drop off some cash at intake?

When I’m sprung, we’re taking off for Cali. 

We got 30 minutes baby, talk.

Black wings rip through my shoulder

blades the color of desire

that cannot be contained in a state

issue plastic chair. 

I glide above the prisoners

beak first against Plexiglas. 

I snap, chirp a misunderstood subsong,

the guards ignore my caws

take aim.

Third Place is . . . 

Mathematics by Christopher Hivner . . . 

Mathematics

The distance traveled

on the plane

had value

for the crew

as far as

fuel consumption,

wear on the aircraft,

and the mood

of the passengers.

            In row E, window seats,

            two fingers to the lips

            meant shh,

            surrender

            to the captured time,

            absorb the turbulence

            and remember

            it will end some day.

The hotel

was ten miles

from the airport

on a road built

with ruts,

and held together by

dust and stones.

            Midnight crowed

            like a rooster

            insane from the heat,

            row E, window seats,

            shed their skin

            reborn as room 235,

            two fingers to the lips

            meant shh,

            this is all we have.

Time travels

at a fixed speed

and cannot be altered,

you can pray

to the father, son,

or holy variable

of the long lost

algorithms,

time will not

respond.

            Sun-heated

            blue-green water

            carrying bodies

            on dappled waves,

            buoyant layers

            of indirection,

            two fingers to the lips

            meant shh,

            we’re almost done

Air speed is something

you don’t feel

when you’re in the air,

during flight

no one thinks about

flight altitude

or the precise combustion

of the modern

jet engine.

            Real world math

            feels leaden,

            time reversing

            through fluid

            thick with

            sleepless thoughts

            and fissures in

            the new blood,

            two fingers to the lips

            meant shh,

            we have to start over.

The Honorable Mentions . . . 

The Traffic in Old Ladies by Mary Newell . . .

The Traffic in Old Ladies

I’m crossing traffic on 8th and 34th

Looking for the cross-town bus, 

confused by the numerous vectors.

Leaning against a rail

casual, one leg bent,

a bright-eyed cocoa-toned young man

croons solicitous: 

"What's bothering you?

 Hey, cum'ere …" 

 I don't remember what he called me

 but he called, again.

 Suspecting him a player in

 the traffic in old ladies, 

I didn’t answer. But his solicitation

propelled me to the mirror back at home.

Twilight softens the contours,

not the intensity.

Face  

Not the woman who twice rebuilt a crumbling life

courageous and persistent

(some would say stubborn)

Nor the adventurer friends tap for vicarious trips

(some would say reckless)

Not the bitterness that sometimes thins my optimist smile,

the worry that tightens my jaw

(some would say tense),

Nor the laugh old friends can recognize

across a teeming room

no…

the shocked look of the curly-locked girl in amber silk

staring confused 

through undulating water 

wondering why

her lover

is holding her

under 

this small rain by Alexis Rhone Fancher . . .

this small rain 

this small rain sambas on San Vicente

wanders through Whittier

mambos past Montebello

and East LA

this small rain moves like a Latina

over-plucks her eyebrows

drinks Tequila shooters

fronts a girl-band

this small rain works two jobs

dawdles in down pours

this small rain seeds clouds

this small rain drives to Vegas in a tormenta

has a friend in Jesus

needs boots and a winter coat

in this drought-wracked city,

this small rain dreams of flash floods, 

depósitos, indigo lakes,

cisterns, high water,

Big Gulps, endless refills

in this drought-wracked city,

this small rain settles on the hierba seca

sleeps under freeways

plays the lotto

is unlucky in love

this small rain longs to hose down the highways

this small rain chases storms

this small rain has a tsunami in her heart

this small rain kamikaze's

in the gutter

suicides on summer sidewalks

dreams of a deluge 

that overflows the river banks

washes L.A. clean

in this drought-wracked city,

this small rain scans the heavens,

looking for a monsoon,

searching for su salvador in the

reclaimed desert sky.

yerba seca: dry grass

tormenta: rainstorm

su salvador: her savior

deposito: reservoir

and . . .

Signs of the Apocalypse by Terri Simon . . .  

Signs of the Apocalypse

Last night, everyone on the planet

had a good night’s sleep.

This morning, everyone used their turn signals

and were gleefully allowed to merge.

No one used racial slurs,

sex was not warfare,

and warfare, finally,

was declared illegal.

The ridiculously rich

fed the poor, voluntarily,

and even fast-food chains

decided to pay a living wage.

Zeus and the Pope

sat down to tea.

And I opened up my hands

and let go.

The List of Other Semi-Finalists . . . 

The Total Treatment                                        by William Doreski

Starving                                                           by Barbara Bald

Portrait                                                                        by Terri Simon

Learning Spanish                                            by Denise Weuve

Sentinels                                                          by Sharon Webster

Magic                                                              by Jay Sizemore

Safe Haven                                                     by Barbara Bald

When the Clock Strikes Midnight                  by Barbara Bald

Speed Dating in Plato’s Cave                         by Bobby Steve Baker

I Sit Here                                                        by Sharon Webster

Breaker Bar                                                     by David Hardin

In Shadow                                                      by Barbara Bald

Rain, Steam, and Speed – 

The GreatWestern Railway                                             by David Hardin

Submissions Have Re-Opened!!!

Submissions are now open for the 2014 Editor's Choice Award!

Deadline: December 31, 2014

THE RESULTS ARE IN!!!!!

The Winner is . . . 

My Mother's Tongue by Barbara Bald . . .

My Mother's Tongue

She used to stick it out for me, displaying
the deep cleft down its middle, irregular bumpy sides
and tiny cracks like those on misfired porcelain.
She'd extend it, roll it into a long tight tube, then
flatten it to reveal its blotchy red surface.

We'd stand before the bathroom mirror, comparing
the hated old tongue to my young flawless, flat one
and I'd listen to her berate it and whatever else she saw
as her other imperfect features.

It was a tongue that could slice with Samurai precision.
Who the hell do you think you are? pierced phone lines
when my father's fishing buddies woke her at 4:00 am,
asking for Captain Joe.

Would you mind moving over? she'd hiss
at the churchgoer who refused to slide into the wooden pew,
causing me to cower in teenage humiliation.

The tongue had no respect for boundaries.
With words, You didn't let him touch you, did you?
or Where does your boyfriend stay when he visits?
it would pry into private areas where it had no place.

Mostly, her tongue would judge --
the friend who wore too many bracelets,
the spaghetti sauce that never tasted as good as hers.
You don't know how to dance, do you? she would notice aloud.
The tongue always called a spade more than a spade.

I had planned to use my young tongue to spread rose petals,
to help polish those who wanted to see their own shine.
If my tongue flapped in unkindness, I hoped
it would be a butter knife rather than a sword --

Today, with my sixty-year old tongue extended to my dentist,
I learned I have what's called a geographical tongue.
The red splotches and tiny fissures of its surface resemble
Pangaea-like plates that react to spicy meals.

Remembering words, I never asked her to be born.
If you don't like it, go home, cruelties I once hurled
at my mother and others, I cringed when he said it,
It's hereditary, you know.
You have your mother's tongue.

Second Place is . . . 

ROYGBIV by Kim King . . .

ROYGBIV 

The yellow bloomed a week after the biopsy --

blurring into the indigo and violet bruises, a dab

of cadmium paint, like in Matisse's Woman with a Hat,

her solemn, green-tinged face and down-turned mouth

glowered under a garish feather and baubled chapeau.

Her squared collar, like my cotton hospital gown,

over-sized and unadorned, concealed her inner wounds.

Mine were under a lacey bra, protected with steri strips

and bandages, but no artist was at the easel.  Instead,

doctors weighed "high risk lesion" and "rare

in zero point zero four percent" with "prevalence

of early tubular carcinoma," while I balanced

a prism refracting white

light in Mr. Grant's seventh grade class,

reciting the colors of the spectrum, in order.

Third Place is . . . 

Just Outside of Bowler City by Daniel Meltz . . . 

Just Outside of Bowler City

my first teacher was my father

a sarcastic figure in underpants

he taught me how to

idolize and instigate

my mother

ran from him

she brushed her hair till it bounced

she used

the hairbrush as a weapon

she loved

the smell of the future

but she never stepped into it

my sister showed me her workbook

a multiplication table and 

spelling lists

she turned on cartoons

heckle and jeckle

two angry crows

she told me about her teachers at school

the teacher with the swinging can

the teacher with the blubbery neck

the one with the 

swishing stockings

the one with the 

tangerine lipstick

we shared a bedroom with a kidnap window

we stage-whispered at daybreak

biting the cream out of cookies

we broke bobby pins in two

and scratched every inch of a crap credenza

The Honorable Mentions . . . 

Rescue by Patricia L. Goodman . . .

Rescue

On the wooded steps of a Nature Center

I find a plastic eye -- the flat kind

with the pupil that moves if you shake it.

It lies there staring.  I imagine

the toy it came from, a teddy bear

perhaps, who now sees the world

in monovision.  When my childhood

teddy's eyes wore off, Mom replaced them

with shoe buttons.  He and I saw each other

differently then, grew accustomed.

After my husband died and I began

my climb from despair, I rescued Teddy

from the back of a dark drawer.

We cried.

and . . .

When to Tell Him That You Love Him by Denise R. Weuve . . .  

When to Tell Him That You Love Him

Wait

until he is in the kitchen

cleaning lunch dishes and you

are walking away.

Make sure the water runs heavy and loud.

Mouth the words

never daring to let the sound escape

as he leaves the table to pour

another cranberry

vodka

to keep you under.

Sign it distinctly

as he hunches over to check

the air in the tires

explaining for the 8th time

how you can do this yourself.

Etch it in the sky

when he is looking downstream

waiting for Salmon to hook on his line

so he can show you the dinner

you make him throw back.

Lock it away

in an old shoebox, fill it

with the paper bag he brought Dansville oranges

to you in.  The one that said

"Don't touch.  Just hers."

The List of Other Semi-Finalists . . . 

E=MC²                                                            by henry 7. reneau, jr.                                                                  

Wood Lake Battlefield Site                               by Dana Yost                           

All Hallows Eve                                                by John J. Brugaletta                                                   

Ice Fisher                                                         by Judith Neale                                                      

Early December                                                by William G. Davies, Jr.                              

An Accident of the Imagination                          by Karla Linn Merrifield      

Two Sides of a Window                                    by D.M. Aderiibigbe

Ars Poetica                                                       by Linnea Harper                                        

Tsunami Zone                                                    by Linnea Harper            

Glamour in the Folds Off-Centre                        by Michael Luke

Midwestern Selkie Girl II                                   by Jennifer Schomburg Kanke

A Mosquito                                                       by Sarah Ghoshal

Don’t Call Her California                                    by Wendy Thornton

How Ian and I Learn                                          by Joan Goodreau

Blessings of Witnessing and Experience               by Judith J. Katz

L’Anse Aux Meadows                                       by Angela Harrison                              

A Winter’s Day                                                  by Michael Magee

Heredity                                                             by Denise R. Weuve