Vigilance by Dana Robbins Kine-ahora, a magical phrase to ward off the evil eye or to show one’s praises are genuine and not tainted by envy. In her stiff spine, her lilting accent, she carried within her Russia, a magic and terrible place of the Cossack’s boot, lilacs and death. She believed, not in God, but devoutly in the always watching Evil Eye which was ready to devour a rosy laughing baby or sneak up on a family grown too complacent. She tied red ribbons on our beds to ward off the jealousy of the Evil Eye, standing guard between us and the vengeful cosmos, as the Evil Eye leaned its ladder against our lighted windows. Her every action was a part of this duty, even as she pounded dough into battalions of pastry, knelt to scour the floor with steel wool, and made the beds tightly with the whitest of white sheets. In her sentinel duty there could be no let up; her hands were always as fierce with love as her mouth was bitter

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Dana Robbins practiced law unhappily until her fifties, when she returned to school to in the Stonecoast Creative Writing Program of the University of Southern Maine, from which she received an MFA in 2013. Dana is partially paralyzed as a result of a stroke she survived as a young woman and writes frequently about health and healing. Her work, both poetry and nonfiction, has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and magazines, including Drunken Boat, Museum of Americana, Mademoiselle Magazine, and The Examined Life Journal of the Carver College of Medicine of the University of Iowa. Her poetry has won several prizes, including an honorable mention in the Fish Poetry Contest of 201, and first prize in the Musehouse Poem of Hope Contest for her poem "At the End of Day."

Eurostar by Danielle sellers The large train windows were fogged with the platform steam. As we left the station, he wrote I LUV U on the glass with his finger. Through his words I could see a steeple and the Thames. In an hour we’d be in Paris, in two our Montmontre hotel room. It hadn’t been long since our London bed, the smell of Cockspur Street’s geraniums and curry through the open window. He asked about my short list of lovers, said he was friends with most of his. As if I wanted to know. I asked why he’d never married. He said, Because they weren’t Jews. But I’m not either, I said. And he said, I know. He looked away. And by then love’s alphabet had disappeared with the steam, replaced with the tunnel’s black. I felt I was being hurtled towards some place different than I’d imagined. When we got to Paris, we checked in to the hotel, ate baguettes and brie like good tourists. I drank a bottle of pinot noir. We didn’t talk.

FINALIST Danielle Sellers is originally from Key West, FL. Her poems have appeared in River Styx, Subtropics, Smartish Pace, The Cimarron Review, Poet Lore, Cold Mountain Review, and elsewhere. Her first book, Bone Key Elegies, was published in 2009 by Main Street Rag. She teaches Upper School English at Trinity Valley School in Fort Worth, Texas.

My Mother Said by Laura Wisniewski this bare finger for the wedding band, this blind tunnel for the wedding night. these lips, like velvet sumac skin, to promise, promise, promise. the black dreams to fill him like a cup. the white dreams to fly to him, to him. these thick thighs, sweet as scented rope, to circle round, to twine the nights. this voice to vow, this voice to ride, to run like a river into his time. blood to seal the passions in, to kiss the children’s eyes. the bed is bare as battered silk, the shallow breath of night recedes. shadows touch the nipple’s tip, this whitened wrist, this fallow heart devoured but untouched by him. golden ring diamond ring ring of songs adorning me. I smash the wedding glass again, the bleached moon for my canopy.

FINALIST Laura Wisniewski is a poet and a Yoga therapist. She lives in a small town in Vermont among family and friends. She has work published or forthcoming in Ilanot Review, Hunger Mountain Literary Review, and Pilgrimage Magazine. She is the winner of the 2014 Passager Poetry Contest.

The End by Joan Kantor I owe it to my roots, to Moses, to the Yankels, Gittels and Rivkas of the ghettos and concentration camps. The sugary sweetness of Passover wine, puts me in mind of the past of the thousands of years of belonging to rituals at times practiced in hiding to four questions once asked at seders, by children long gone to great and grandparents who kvell as they listen while preparing once again to respond but my children have lost the connection, mumble the prayers and songs and I know there'll be no answers when I'm gone.

FINALIST Joan Kantor is a poet. educator and poetry therapist in training. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and she recently took first prize, for AGNOSTIC, in the Hackney Lit-erary Awards. Her book, SHADOW SOUNDS, was a finalist for The Foreward Reviews Book of the Year Award,

Candle At The Window by Ruth Rifka I lit the Yahrzeit candle as always, the 8th day of the Pesach. But of course she has long Passed Over. And I am older far, than she, or ever expected to be. While it burns, she comes alive again. Inside that flame, breathes a pulsing, like the inner/outer force that storms the wild waves in the ocean I see outside my window. While the candle burns we are on the same side together. I have given her life. And I am her living child

FINALIST My poetry and short stories have been showcased on CBC ANTHOLOGY, and published in Fiddlehead, Tamarack, Branching Out, Room of One’s Own, Descant, Contemporary Verse 2 plus, other literary magazines. I am also a painter whose work can be seen on www.ruthrifka.com .

The Shower by Shirani Rajapakse She waits for the water to fall, to flow over and wash her clean like the day she was born. Together they journeyed across the land travelling the distance long and hard. Some died, crammed like cattle inside carriages, trampled on by others trying to make room, or be comfortable. But she lived, while they died. She waits for the water in that cold hard place. Shivers run down her back yet she smiles to herself in anticipation of better things while all the rest wait with her, wondering why the water doesn’t come. The showers have gone dry. She looks down at the little child standing patiently by her side and sees her smile mirrored with hope. The future seems fine. They made it after all. It couldn’t be that bad. Suddenly the smell of gas. All around they scream and gag. She claws the air, falling, crashing never to rise again, the smile wiped off her lips now drawn with pain.

FINALIST Shirani Rajapakse is a Sri Lankan poet and author. Her work appears in many international literary magazines and anthologies. She blogs infrequently at http://shiranirajapakse.wordpress.com

Too Late by Alicia Jo Rabins "It is never too late to become what you might have been." --George Eliot It is too late. Late to uncreate light. to take back what's been said and, wet wind, late to be out trawling for a baby: the sea black, the floodlight pouring. I stroke my feathered throat on the captain's deck, weighing seconds and decades, spoils of antiquity. Home at last I am soaked. Drained. Wrung out. I stick a chicken in the oven, I stick both my hands in it and cry, "Cook us both together God, if you are going to!" It is a quarrel of lifelong friends. God and I understand each other -- we are both very old. We both know it is late for me to might have been, to magic-wand muteness to life, just as God cannot unmultiply, defruit, divide, undo dominion, close rib-flesh over, thumb continents together, unsplit upper & lower, watercolor all firmament, all hovering. Bodiless breath. Too late, God, for both of us. Waste and wild. Too late.

FINALIST Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet, composer, performer and Jewish educator based in Portland, OR. She tours internationally with her band, Girls in Trouble, an indie-folk song cycle about women in Torah. Alicia's poems appear in American Poetry Review, 6x6, Boston Review; she is a staff writer for Kveller, and she holds a MFA from Warren Wilson.

This Year in Jerusalem by Dina Elebogen This year I will unfold the papers follow the maps to where my back fit perfectly into the crevice of a stone where the left arm of a woman brushed my forehead on a bus to tell me it was time to get down. The tenderness of her rough knuckles brought tears I didn’t know were there against the silhouette of hills in the distance. This year my children will float on the miracle of salt Sometimes it will burn their delicate skin. I will take them to the Galil where once I found poppies on the edge of an empty wadi where in the distance men kneeled for prayer women hung green linen on the line The dark sky held it’s breath. Cyclamen burned on the hills petals open for the possibility of rain

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An award winning and widely published poet and prose writer, Elenbogen is the author of the poetry collection Apples of the Earth (Spuyten Duyvil, NY) and the forthcoming memoir, Drawn from Water: An American Poet, and Ethiopian Family, an Israeli Story (BkMKPress, University of Missouri 2015.) She teaches at the University of Chicago Writer's Studio.

Rifka Walks in Central Park by Julie Cottineau

Private Shabbos ritual feigning piousness no longer felt. Once a pack of Virginia Slims in her

pocket, now a middle- aged memory, phantom heft for company. Across 72nd street past Straw-

berry Fields. John Lennon— too hairy, but gone too soon. May his memory be a blessing. Head

down, brown wool coat, black skirt below her knees. Picture of a proper Rebbetzin. Eyes fixed

on sensible shoes, comfortable but so boxy. Shoes! Invading her dreams like a lover. Waking

ashamed, and wet with sweat, and … oh, God forgive her…with desire. Red, high heeled,

Shiksa shoes. Mortification and secret delight. Wind rises to dislodge hat and wig beneath.

Holding on, she lifts her head and sees him: unmistakable red hair, slouched shoulders, hands

crammed in pockets, Woody Allen. What kind of man leaves his wife for his step-daughter?

What kind of Jew? Pfft. Pfft. She spits on fingers, wards off evil spirits. God sees into her

wicked heart. Pfft. Pfft. Trodding heavily on crumpled crimson leaves.

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Julie Cottineau is a teacher and lecturer on brand strategy and innovation. Her writings and commentaries have appeared in Forbes.com, Entrepreneur magazine, AdWeek, CNN, and on her BLOG at www.brandtwist.com.