Midday
“were almost twenty-five and twenty-eight:/even the connection on the phone was faint” | by Emily Leithauser
Poems
A Night in Madina
“The stranger didn’t eat much/and she didn’t dance/and she didn’t remove her plastered shoes” | by Brian Gyamfi
The Tree Carries Water
“Dandelions pass where I used to live./The gardener lets go of the river, the water whispers” | by Brian Gyamfi
The Valley
“I took the boat out every morning, / allowing my hands to skim/the shimmering sky” | by Lauren Aliza Green
Pack Your Bags
“In no time, he cannot/ see too far into himself, so full he is, so dull” | by Anna Leahy
Navigation by Falling Stars
“Of course, some lives/ burn hotter or brighter than others” | by Anna Leahy
Gloss
“No one is a machine of perpetual motion./ There’s more to it—to us” | by Anna Leahy
The Hidden Springs
“I have a feeling for a moment that the elk is God—/ a god that we can watch.” | by Sarah Maclay
Art Deco Sonnet
“O sleekness, O pizzazz, O mirrors, O chrome,/O remnant inklings of a light-struck world” | by Jacqueline Osherow
Ghazal Season
“Once, I wrote a ghazal trimmed in gold,/ to mirror the implausible” | by Jacqueline Osherow
Cochlea
“The murkiness, the smog, the thickened haze/ in me are hard to love.” | by Jehanne Dubrow, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
The Usual Suspects or a Chronological List of the Ways Men Have Referred to my Breasts:
“They’re my favorite part of you, Mama,/ my son says, pressing into them hard” | by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
Silence in Syria
“Melt the ink into my hands/ like the metal of a tank being welded./ Use this newspaper as a rag” | by Seif-Eldeine, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
Exit
“On every door in this village/ there are last notes left by families/ crossing the sea to another land.” | by Rasaq Malik, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
The Starlight in Syria
“The wounded know stars are a furnace/ for mankind’s sins. The wounded curl themselves/ into a ball of starlight” | by Seif-Eldeine, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
I sat next to Adele on a plane and she bought me a house
“I’d gotten a fluky upgrade, moved from 38C to 4B./ She— a stranger still, was already sitting, a silver/ studded handbag at her feet,” | by Patrick Holloway, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
monarchs are the communication medium for when i die
“a tiny sun in my belly quieted by sweet tea & new tales” | by Phil SaintDenisSanchez, 2020 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
Pluto Retires(And During The Exit Interview Sits Near a Wide Window While Watching a Violence of Florida Rainbow Wreckage Unleash Its Storm Over an Empty Magic Kingdom)
“Time to hand in your costume child./ – So much has happened here.” | by Michael Martin, 2020 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
Wheel
“How I loved saying I was deeply skeptical of the adverb, very/ but then I got run over by a truck” | by Michael Martin, 2020 C.P Cavafy Finalist
We Were the Kind
“to tell it true we’d say/ we don’t know what it is/ we’re nowhere near the end of.” | by Michael Martin, 2020 C.P. Cavafy Finalist