Registration photo of Bill Brymer for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Father’s Day

Flies land on raw hamburger meat,
my daughter sees before I can wave them away
says her appetite’s ruined, the heat
I explain will kill any germs, it’s too late,
her mind has hardened. 

Grey tower of grill smoke 
a message to the neighborhood 
I’m lazy about the little things.
Garden hose left out in a looping line. 
A pile of trimmed branches 
from the hedge between houses
sits in the drive, a mound the dog walks up to,
pees on.

I’ve forgotten to start steaming
the asparagus and the burgers are done,
we’ll be eating in stages, one course
at a time. Daughter wants cereal,
will I go to the store and get some?

You’ve got to be kidding.

Oh, but, just look at that face,
how it mimics in certain light
the one that surprises me most,
and the one I love best.

The father-daughter dance begins:
how much damage by giving in?

Category
Poem

Tick tick tick

Forever rolling on

No matter how much I resist

She breaks through

An unbreakable power

I cannot restrain the motion of her hands

I cannot halt myself from hurling into the present

I cannot resist her sweet promises

Of distance from my mistakes

And the assurance of future pleasures

I am so afraid of what is to come

And yet

I cannot stop it

Nor can I control it

Registration photo of Linda Bryant for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Kitchen Forgiveness Tanka

teapot on table

thank you for forgiving me
cinnamon & orange linger
when bad thoughts overtake me
I must remember to breathe

Registration photo of Rafael Ribeiro for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

On the Impossible Occasion when Dante Alighieri Ascends Purgatory with the West Virginia Mothman

                                        Quando toccarono il culmine, bruciando,  
                                        oltre il lamento e il lungo ululà,
                                        
le fiamme si piegarono, sfumando.

At life’s end, by well known paths encouraged, I return
blithe to leap the river jetty, climb a precipice of crying gloom.
Charon’s empty skull fingering palmers for what he earns.

I guide a wingèd man who by sooty, ghastly hinges looms,
and spectral legs of smoke will never land, bruised with fiery ash
above the marble saints in collect near rotten, open tombs.  

First we trace ten infernal ditches, corrupt with politicians brash,
we levitate toward jutting prominence where sweetest hopes do rest.
My carriage is the Mothman’s wings, that ring impure as ferrous glass.

To the tower all-knowing, which proposes souls the test
an lidless orb, ruby bright, evinces warsome, yet-a-gentle Mars!
We witness souls dervish to cinder sin and whirl-a-joy at best!

Happy I recall my mid-age tale; I had passed Stygian scars
and furrows, the Scylla and Charybdis to forge love’s way to mount
by leaps, I leapt off rising, spheres around the sound of joy, my guard.

At work my wraith wrests penitence from a myriad throng I count,
and his meticulous red eyes bid sinew halt with piercing brights.
Never assume here to know yourself, the hawkmoth differs and is sharp. 

The haint grows in the Earth, no care a single virtue told of other nights—
he robs their grace, consigns the careless to sour songs and hells of woe—
Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis, O, bitter, bitter, plight.

Today, sealed six feet underworld, mouths contracted in an O,
stillborn copies—shadows of your life will say, “I am mother, I am wife!”
Like a moth you reply by threes, “Who are you to me? If you say so.”

And as you clutch in hand pilgrim candles to aid your aged sight,
harkening to the fountain of all: the God above God, breath inside breath,
dare the imposters challenge you— “I seek true home, I seek he who is light.”

 

 

Category
Poem

The Journey

Sometimes
you don’t realize how
far down you were
until you’ve climbed
back up.

The journey feels long,
but only when you
turn around 
do you see
just how far
you have had
to come.

And that’s when
it hits you.
And you can finally say–

I never 
should have had
to do that
alone.

Registration photo of jstpoetry for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Emotional Labor

Please, don’t build up the moment. You love to climb a wall of worry. Destroying everyone in your orbit.

You always wanna talk too late, after your actions.

You did wrong but insist on putting the weight of the situation on me.

It’s been a hard day and I’m on the end of a long line that keeps stretching. I’m in a transactional relationship with everything else, and it is exhausting. I am no one’s number one. Right now I’m looking for someone to make my world smaller.

Registration photo of Pam Campbell for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

American Sentence LXIX

Writing between lines of borrowed novel, she drips time against sunrise.

Registration photo of Lee Chottiner for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

‘Write to Me Sometime’

It’s her hair
and her stare from the other side
from where none of us have ever stared.
Her mother – maybe her name is Anna –
sends the postcard to “Bernice”
the hair and the stare touching her.

“Bernice
What do you think
of my little doll,”
the maybe-Anna
scribbles on the back of the postcard,
basking in that hair and stare
“Come to see us Soon. Don’t know
when we will get [out] there
would love to come
Kiss all the babies for me.”

 Like life
the penciled lines fade.
A corner of the post card is torn away.
Mother’s signature is dissolved by time.
But written at an angle
buttressing the rest of the scribbled lines
is a plea or perhaps a need:
“Write to me Some Time.”

Category
Poem

therapist

my therapist said

that sometimes

we run out of coping skills

that will work in the moment

sometimes we have to just distract

she asks me if i work so much to avoid feeling

my feelings

my structure & routine

help keep the depression

lows from hitting

rock bottom

keep my highs

humbled

keep me grounded

keeping my feet

planted in reality

although,

there are days

i wish for more downtime

more me time

i remember the

economy is kicking my ass

Category
Poem

Secretary

Other kids might look at you 
with a certain amount of                                                                     side-eye

if you tell them that your dream when you grow up
is to be a secretary in an office.
But I have been fortunate to know 
many kind office assistants throughout my life,
people who knew everything,
fixed everything,
knew everyone,
and fixed everyone.
They were all as close to omniscient about their workplaces
as humans could reasonably be,
but too many of my classmates thought
that that job could only be
held by a woman. 
These friends did not measure
the desire to help others
even if that eagerness was balanced
with a biweekly disgust for Excel spreadsheets.
So I kept this ambition a secret
until I had seated myself at other tables
to feed other appetites,
but I always remembered these observations,
inclinations from my youth,
and I use them to motivate my interactions
and fill them with kindnesses that others will remember.
I may never be the amalgamation 
of administrative assistants from my past
that I had hoped to be when I was much younger,
yet I can still long for a meaning
that I build with people everyday.