The 2005 issue of The Eleventh Muse contains a superb array of 48 poems by 32 poets from 18 US states plus England.

Staff

Editor: Steven D. Schroeder
Design & Layout: Lara Gaydos
Associate Editors: Lois Beebe Hayna, Ron Noel, Aaron Anstett, & Jane Wampler

The issue is available for $5.

Poetry West
PO Box 2413
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80901

The complete list of poets appearing in this issue:
Aaron Anstett, David Anthony, Grace Bauer, Louis E. Bourgeois, Michael Cantor, Glenda Cooper, Michael Dobberstein, Karen Donovan, Justin Evans, Patricia Farewell, Meg Files, Ethan Fode, Sarah Getty, Taylor Graham, M. A. Griffiths, Jane Hilberry, Rose Kelleher, David Keplinger, Cindy E. King, Katie Kingston, Jennifer Koiter, Sandra McNew, Michael Milligan, Steve Mueske, Timothy Murphy, Chris Ransick, Matt Schumacher, Phillip Sterling, Clay Stockton, Wendy Videlock, Jane Wampler, Jake Adam York

Congratulations to the following winners of the 2005 Lois Beebe Hayna Award for best poem in the issue, as selected by the entire editorial staff:
1st Place: “A Brief Correspondence Between Halloween and the Aurora Borealis,” Matt Schumacher
2nd Place: “I Love to Stand on the Backs of the Turtles,” Karen Donovan
3rd Place: “The Day the Funk Arrived,” Steve Mueske

Honorable Mentions
“The Deadly-Sin Shoppe,” Taylor Graham
“South of Knoxville,” Jake Adam York
“Rays at Cape Hatteras,” Rose Kelleher
“For Claire,” Michael Cantor

Congratulations to Rose Kelleher, who had her poem "Rays at Cape Hatteras" featured at Verse Daily.
Congratulations to Karen Donovan, who had her poem "I Love to Stand on the Backs of the Turtles" featured at Verse Daily.

Sample Poems:

"About Certainty" by Wendy Videlock

Dear Lord, I Know a Man Who Became Obsessed with Washing His Hands

fiercely in the lavatory. Scrubbing over and over. Lately I speak
at odd moments like You stood there beside me—on elevators,

in theaters, in checkout lines so strangers draw away and stare,
evidence the mouth has moved without me. I know not what I say,

the roundness of Your Name on my tongue all that remains. That man washing,
me speaking to Your shadow, how are these not the same? Tell me, what orders

wasp to sting spider, drag her to a burrow, lay eggs in her? Spider still lives.
Still breathes. If You spoke to me would I prophesy? Do I now? Oh Lord,

something stung that man to soap, more soap. Something pursed a venom speech
in me. Lately I speak like You stood beside me. Fear to wash my own hands.

—Michael Milligan

Rondeau for Late Winter

Dusk comes down the hills, cold silent shapes
backlit by frail sun. Yesterday I closed the drapes
on morning light I’d welcome now, anything
that gives heat; my bones can’t wait for spring.
I watch as one more winter day escapes.

Feel the wind come howling, see how it scrapes
at the field’s snow crust, how it wraps
around tree trunks, lifts the high crow’s wing.
Dusk comes down the hills;

The sun’s an addiction, worst when night lays ropes
of stars across sky; a familiar scupper dips
into the black. Chill shrinks the ring
on my finger and then the finger, too. I sing
for early dawn, notes lost on silent shapes,
as dusk comes down the hills.

—Chris Ransick

Dreaming Beneath the Bridge

I dream cottonmouth snakes
swimming after me in the creek
beneath the wide, bilious moon,
thick with venom.

From beneath, the cold tugs
at my jeans, and I know
rivers never bluff.

The willows and cat tails
drop their shadows
while cloud husk sloughs
past the West Fields, night
looking for an unpaid debt.

Those snakes smile like a preacher
with a full collection plate
two Sundays in a row

and death, his name is Fat Mike.

—Justin Evans

An Almost Perfect Place

He likes the dying
light of day and how it nibbles
at the city’s edge. One by one,
facades dissolve into the fog, and bridges
disappear as fingers of mist creep
along their spines. A strain
of music trickles from an open window and falls

silent. He revels in this world:
the gruff wind, the slapped face
of the river, the smell of leaves
cool and wet in their decay, the shapeless
mud beneath his feet. Everything lies
dead at his command,
and he’s alone, alone, alone, except

for the geese that cluster on the path ahead. Damn
those ratty-feathered birds whose comic honks
subvert his world, a world conspiring against his will
to share itself, to be more than his own.

—Ethan Fode