Poetry West
PO Box 2413
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80901

The complete list of writers appearing in this issue:
Alex Williams, Andrea L. Watson, Tony Trigilio, Joanne Tangorra, A. E. Stallings, John Pursley III, Stephen S. Power, John Poch, Robert Perchan, Jeff Newberry, Steve Mueske, Peter Meinke, Clay Matthews, Erin Malone, Jeanne Larsen, Rebecca Laroche, Greg Kosmicki, Jennifer Koiter, Katie Kingston, Carrie Jerrell, Thomas Jardine, Mark Irwin, Brandi Homan, Jenn Habel, R. S. Gwynn, Hillary Gravendyk Burrill, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Jeffrey Franklin, Allen C. Fischer, Marta Ferguson, Ellen Kirvin Dudis, Lucille Lang Day, Jordan Davis, Leigh Anne Couch, Gaylord Brewer, Ash Bowen, Mary Biddinger, Shaindel Beers, Sandra Beasley, Jeffery Bahr, Scott M. Bade, Amanda Auchter, Susan Kay Anderson, M. Lee Alexander, & Deborah Ager

Congratulations to the winners of the 2006 Lois Beebe Hayna Award for best poem in the issue, as selected by the entire editorial staff:
1st Place: “Windows,” Mark Irwin
2nd Place: “Ciphers,” Leigh Anne Couch
3rd Place: “Unflown,” Sandra Beasley

Honorable Mentions
“Canticles,” Jeff Newberry
“For M. D.,” R. S. Gwynn

Congratulations to the winners of the inaugural Eleventh Muse poetry contest:
1st Place: “Einstein's Brain,” Andrea L. Watson
2nd Place: “Houdini Kiss,” M. Lee Alexander
3rd Place: “What Will We Do With You? This Bone Has Almost No Flesh Protecting It--,” Shaindel Beers

Congratulations to Jeannine Hall Gailey, who had her poem "Femme Fatale" featured at Verse Daily.
Congratulations to Jeffery Bahr, who had his poem "Diaspora" featured at Verse Daily.

Read a review of The Eleventh Muse 2006

Sample Poems:

"Clyde Tombaugh on His Discovery of Pluto" by Amanda Auchter
"Hello Thank You" by Jordan Davis

Invitation to My Old, Dead Friend

So when I say I was born in the back seat
of a Buick it’s the same as saying
please love me like an old gray boot.

The windowpane holds the morning
like a shovel. I ask to be held the same.

We were driving the back roads and for once
I didn’t feel like passing the red tractor.

This is what we leave behind when we wear
straw hats. This is how the past coughs ahead
looking forward without looking back.

I let you pump the gas at the station
because I didn’t feel like standing up.

Five years now since we sang together to the radio
station’s blues hour. Fifty or more since my grandpa
said There’s rain ahead on a silver CB.

I’m asking you to come and burn yearbooks
with me. I’m asking you to leave a better goodbye.
It’s a white house. Two cars in the driveway.
And mine is the yard that needs mowing.

—Clay Matthews

Two Kinds of Arson

She is always sad like a house on fire
—Sandra Cisneros

—And when it was bad,
we believed maple trusses
were enough. I was a charnel

half-buried in earth—
not the clean soil of soybean
rows, but filth, the dark meat.

He’d tie my hair back in bows.
The doctors gave me naphtha
and told me it was a parade.

Sparklers swimming in slow circles,
I was in love with kerosene
from the fire breather’s mouth—

how to get so much from one body?
Genetic tinderbox,
girl gone up like a match.

Bones dried in, we fingernailed
brush rakes to the wall, spackled
sinkholes. I became acolyte—

prescribed burn so hot
these letters are firebrands,
this book an empty room.

Note: the quoted line is by Ellen Wehle, from “Pyromancy”

—Brandi Homan

My Knife

I found my knife, mislaid
out back, still open. Rust
had bitten, dulled the blade.

I don’t remember losing it.
Two months, at least. No job
required using it.

The doorbell seldom rings.
No mail. No calls. I find
my patience misses things.

—Thomas Jardine