[Janice D. Soderling]

Oh, I love this one. It is the first that really, really grabbed me and won't let go.

I love the clever "Children don't know beans" which isn't a cliché as used here; it is colloquial diction and as such right on the mark. And "beans" coming after "breeding bats in this old belfry" shows that the poet knows exactly what she (assumed she) is doing. (b, b, b, b yet never seeming a strained attempt at alliteration.)

I love this as well:

see their crepey skin
like washed unironed taffeta, their veins
a railway map of Europe,

It happens, but not often, that I am so rapturous over a poem online or in the many journals and books that I peruse daily.

I think this one might well have won the Nemerov (which by the way is open now featuring a well-known judge).

This is certainly worthy inclusion in any sonnet anthology.

Brava! Bravissima!