Jennifer Fandel
Heat Wave

Jennifer Fandel - Heat Wave

Contest - Honorable Mention
Jennifer Fandel’s poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Baltimore Review, Midwestern Gothic, Little Patuxent Review, Natural Bridge, Calyx, and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology… Read more »
Moira Egan
Hot Flash Sonnet

Moira Egan - Hot Flash Sonnet

Contest - 2nd Place
Moira Egan's poetry collections are Cleave (WWPH 2004); Bar Napkin Sonnets (The Ledge 2009); La Seta della Cravatta/The Silk of the Tie (Edizioni l'Obliquo 2009); and Spin (Entasis Press, 2010, for… Read more »
Ann Cwiklinski
Selkie

Ann Cwiklinski - Selkie

Contest - 1st Place
Ann Cwiklinski won first place in the WITF/Central PA Magazine writing contest in 2009 and 2011; her stories, “Dulce Domum” and “Girl’s Song,” were published in that magazine. She previously… Read more »
Claudia Cortese
The field curdles

Claudia Cortese - The field curdles

Contest - 3rd Place
Claudia Cortese’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2011, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, DIAGRAM, and Kenyon Review Online, among others. Cortese recently completed her first book of… Read more »

Hot Flash Sonnet

Moira Egan

As if you’d spent all Roman afternoon
inside the cool embrace of marble walls
of some palazzo, and then, all too soon,
it’s time to leave, they’re closing, hall by hall,
so you step out onto the August street,
the white sun blaring down, asphalt echoes
of sticky, stinky, visible waves of heat.
Sweat pours from you but has nowhere to go.

Or like that dish of mutton vindaloo,
(remember how the waiter shook his head,
anticipatory sympathy for you,
misguided Anglo girl), then how it spread,
internal spice combustion, your blood no
longer blood at all, but habanero.
Read more »