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Registration photo of Tabitha Dial for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Tabitha Dial
Category
Poem
7
6/9/25

God Bless the Protests in L.A.

Today all the things are going, gone that we’ve worked hard for all our lives.

And ICE is taking immigrants, including children and wives.
There’s a lot to say about living here today. 
The oval office is held by a man of treason, and he’s taking all the rights away. 
 
I’m not proud to be an American,
where the press, we know, ain’t free. 
I won’t forget we are corporate owned by AIPAC 
and robber barons who aren’t for you and me. 
Still I’ll gladly stand up next to you
and defend what anitifascists have to say. 
Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land
God bless the protests in L.A.
 
From the lakes of Minnesota, to the hills of Tennessee
Across the plains of Texas, from sea to shining sea
From Detroit down to Houston and New York to L.A.
Well, there are questions in every American heart
And it’s time we stand and say
 
I’m not proud to be an American,
where the press, we know, ain’t free. 
I won’t forget we are corporate owned by AIPAC 
and robber barons who aren’t for you and me. 
Still I’ll gladly stand up next to you
and defend what anitifascists have to say. 
Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land.
God bless the protests in L.A.
Registration photo of Goldie for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Goldie
Category
Poem
2
6/9/25

The Nebbish

I’ll augur my day 

in the paint flakes, coldly
contest great pangs of 
change like maybe a
wall-eyed olm might
pimple-pop soap bubbles, hooden
         the calmly lamazing moon
            with a street lamp, hold
 
each breath until each breath beckons, begins 
to compound in profoundly combustible
caterwauls
       snagged
        in some waffling frog’s throat, snubbing
         the sparks like hex-flexed kittens make
 
muffins; and note in the spectre of anything other than
              clumsy uncertainty—cats at play
              or prayed for, fording their way to a sticky
              eternity tossed among rawed and redundant
 
stars—what thumb-smudged trace of
gods or alarms left
dithering, much as impending
headlights, limelights, eyelights,
                  moonlight lingers in what
                  small, farcical fart thrust
                  seraphim-thick from a crack
                  in my mewling apartment, 
                                         needing me there
 
every morning and evening, to 
shield it again from a falling or 
shuddering star that I’ve cramped
         in the dybbuk’s appendages, gathered 
         like sausages mocking
         bananas or cobwebs clotting
         my sump-pump-crumpling
         closet’s creases—

carole johnston
Category
Poem
1
6/9/25

naming song #1

I have no name
today my name is Opal Bear Mother
Bear Mother Boogie 
Cloud Watcher Wind Rider
a name every day I become

kj
Category
Poem
6/9/25

Nature

The way I love you is impossible to describe

The sun forever chasing the moon

Sea water crashing upon the sand

Autumn leaves drifting to the ground

Devoted

Stars twinkling against the black night sky

Petals stretching in spring air

Snow dancing across frozen ground

Fated

Water leaping into the arms of a pond

Sunlight kissing blades of sweetgrass

Soft wind whispering sweet nothings to the trees

Reverent

The way I love you is inevitable

As though it was in my nature

Registration photo of PBSartist for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
PBSartist
Category
Poem
1
6/9/25

the blanket

it rest folded  just so
when I lift it from the arm I tell myself to note its shape
this gentle drape means something
so I take it up with care  cover the shivering limbs
and feel my heart reach out a bit further
tenderly attentive to this borrowed place

Registration photo of Madison Miller for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Madison Miller
Category
Poem
6/9/25

Instructions to a Future Heart

When you tighten under pressure,

know valves are meant to release.

There are a million tender cells

begging to loosen your grip.

It’s easy to forget, how much easier it may be

to follow the pumping thumping beat.

Registration photo of Mike Wilson for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Mike Wilson
Category
Poem
6
6/9/25

God Honors the Sand Crab

Consciousness sees
what the sand crab sees
with its two little beady eyes
atop antennae 

The sand crab gives
what it sees to God
and God, without hesitation,
whispers Thank You

Registration photo of Lav for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Lav
Category
Poem
4
6/9/25

I get sick easy

“we can see your whole
face! It’s much nicer.” That’s not
why I wear a mask.

Registration photo of Coleman Davis for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Coleman Davis
Category
Poem
7
6/9/25

Sanzen

 One hand is clapping 

while descending leaves fly free,
 

petioles intact.
Registration photo of Bill Brymer for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Bill Brymer
Category
Poem
11
6/9/25

Unanswerable

A few neighbors and I were standing in the road
talking while our kids shot baskets
on one of those portable goals
you can raise as they grow.

We were chatting, encouraging the kids on,
when a large bird fell out of the sky
onto my lawn. Some kind of hawk,
it stood there screeching, flapping its wings
but unable to lift off.

I hurried inside the house and grabbed a beach towel
to wrap it in, thinking there were vets and rescues
that cared for raptors — by the time I came back to it,
the bird was dead, ridged claws clutching clumps of grass.
The neighbor who knew birds best
declared it a falcon, peregrine likely, likely juvenile.
Probably poison.

And for the first time in forty years,
I thought of my childhood friend, Frank Miles,
how there toward the end he wore a knit cap,
even on a warm spring day, to hide what the chemo
had done to him. Never grew up, never got old,
dead at age eleven, not fully grown —

how he turned to me while we sat
in the dugout watching the good players
on our team take their turns at bat, Frank,
the honorary mascot, asked through eyes
that were wiser and wetter than my own,
the one question I still don’t have an answer for.

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