Safe Talk by SHISA POET:
Shisa's small gnome of a lyric is so brief as to seem shallow, but, ah, look closer and watch how with an economy of language the poet captures one deep, erotic, foreboding gesture. It takes only one moment to remind us that we're mortal, and so too does this poem.

The Detective by HOWARD GOOD:
As with any strong poem, this one demands several readings. I've read it at least half a dozen times but still don't know completely what it's about, still haven't gotten to the bottom of it. In the end, however, the speaker appropriates the mystery shrouding this evocative poem in fear and darkness.

An Exclamation Mark by WARD KELLEY:
The dichotomy of body and soul is an age-old theme in poetry. The Victorians used it with greatness (think: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Robert Browning), but I haven't quite seen it used like this before. Kelley's excellent lyric teeters between a tongue-in-cheek finality and a profound philosophical stance.

By Your Own Hand by ANNE ROLLINS:
I believe it was Kafka who said that when we write letters we are talking to ghosts. Rollins' domestic elegy lacks the outward trappings of the epistolary form, but inside it startlingly and elegantly postures itself as a letter to a lost loved one.

At the Inverted Fountain, UCLA  by C.E. CHAFFIN:
Chaffin's oddly affecting lyric is about the search for a state of existence that is pure and free of the neglect and refuse of humanity. The transformation in the final stanza is as much a moment of transcendence as it is an act of self-purification.

Spain  by LOGAN RYAN SMITH:
Purists may frown upon the paradox that is the prose poem, but Smith's piece is no exercise in prosaic banality. There is a lyricism to be had in the unbroken flow of words across the page, in the unbroken flow of the moment. This is a piece about yearning and repression, about how two people can be cut off from each other not so much by silence as by inaction.

How Ordinary It Is (tanka) by DAVID L. KIRKLAND:
Much like Shisa's piece, this poem's punch is in its brevity, and I've always been a sucker for verse that turns the mundane into the magical. Savor this one poetic drip of sweetness.

 

Cesar Garza is a senior editor for The Rose & Thorn Literary E-Zine.

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