Finalist Sandra Soli Gathering Ingredients This bowl from the back of the cupboard a tradition, yellow and scarred but the right size. Every year I expect to break it. Mandarin oranges and pineapple bits from cans, drained sunspots heaped in a colander. What else? Banana coins, sprinkled with lemon and a soft froth of cream so that our mouths may speak only only kindness. And this year something new: star fruit, an oddly-shaped cosmic good luck charm benign in my hand, sunset-skinned, seeking mutability. What does it look like, growing? Is it finished? Does it know? How do I slice astronomy so easily, atoms spinning into the family salad? They might explode at any moment, infanta-stars to fill a sky or a table with hope, points of light that could last long enough. _ ___ _ Table of Contents _ Allison Joseph _ Maureen Tolman Flannery _ Carissa DiGiovanni _ Dion N. Farquhar _ Willa Granger _ Sandra Soli _ Gerald R. Wheeler _ Michele Battiste _ Radames Ortiz _ Brady Rhoades _ Jennifer Weathers _ Helen Wickes _ Allen Gee _ Michelle Panik O'Neill _ Susana Chavez-Silverman _ Susana Chavez-Silverman _ Liz Dolan _ Author Bios