1st: Alice Friman

          Shopping with Descartes

Like a supermarket chicken,
a brain weighs about three pounds,
without feathers of course.
Thoughts, like feathers, weigh

next to nothing—whimsies
of no matter. What’s a thought?
A twitch, a little quiver in the jelly
quickened to life by a shock
of electricity before slipping
back into the fold it was born in.

Still, thoughts are important.
If I don’t come up with a thought
for three days, my brain morphs
into a daisy stuck in the vase
of my neck. After two weeks

I could generate a bouquet.
People who think about thoughts
are philosophers. People who
think about thinking about
thoughts are epistemologists.
The book says God once had
a thought which he tucked inside
a word, which makes God a linguist.
It must have been a big word—
an abracadabra word, powerful enough
to create the sun, moon, earth, lions,
tigers, birds and bugs. Imagine,
all in six days. On the seventh day
he rested—so tired from repeating
his word he had to go to bed without
another thought in his head. And that’s
when we got the flowers.

2^nd Elina Petrova                           “Pencil”
3^rd Tim Mayo                                  “The Black Wolf of Your Past”

Kimberly Beyers: “Celiac’s Soliloquy” — Lisa Bledsoe: “Not a Poem” — Bill Carpenter: “Ken in Love” — Scott Chalupa: “abc[dot]xyz ( or G is for …)” — Cameron Cocking: “Oneness Is Kind of Symmetry” — Kathleen Cook: “Transient Ischemic Stroke (TIA)” — Barbara Crane: “No, I was the slightest in the house” — Rafaella Del Bourgo: “Crayola Me a River” — Deborah DeNicola: “Carolyn’s Pillow” — Jessica Siobhan Frank: “Erotic Tales from the MLA  Handbook” — Alice Friman: “The Eternal Question” — Dean Gessie: “Gram Bonkers” — Dean Gessie: “Islands of Mean(while)” — Joan Gerstein: “The Age of Asparagus” —Joan Gerstein: “My Mother Tells Me What I Must Do — Gene Grabiner: “Frank R. Stockton in Kansas” — Richard Levine: “What … No Chocolates?” — Ellaraine Lockie: “Nomenclature in Montana” — Christina Lovin: “The Female Praying Mantis Eats Her Mate” — Christina Lovin: “Dung Beetles Find Home by Searching the Stars — Katharyn Machan: “Hazel tells LaVerne” — Andrea Messineo: “Logos in Three Movements” — John Milkereit: “On the Occasion of My Boring Death” — Greg Moglia: “DEATH COMES TO MATCH. COM” — Carla Myers: “Chores” — Carla Myers:“You Too Can Make a Golem” — Susan Pashman: “On Hogarth’s ” ‘The Orgy’ from ‘The Rake’s Progress’” — Robert Perchan: “IN ENGLISH THE KOREAN WORD “BOP” MEANS  “GLUTINOUS RICE,”or, AT THE WOMEN’S COLLEGE — Clela Reed: “Spend a Day at the Homeliness Shelter” —Michael Schein: “Not Saying the F-Word” — Vivian Shipley Shipley: “Martha Stewart’s Ten Commandments for Cannabis Users” — Vivian Shipley Shipley: “The Poet as Surfer Chick” –Mark Svenvold: “Selfie w/Cathedral” — Bruce Taylor: “MIDDLE-AGED MAN, SMOKING” — Debra Wilk: “MATING WALTZ” —Debra Wilk: “TREE GUYS”