Registration photo of Lou for the LexPoMo 2026 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Computer Brain

easy digital head
upgrade tech for hard
sinister humanoid
video content

Registration photo of Jazzy for the LexPoMo 2026 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

 Freedom

Let Freedom Ring
Let it ring so loud
It bursts the sound barrier
That it reverberates back to a time when
It was okay to disagree without being seen as a threat
Where freedom of speech was free
Where you could vote an absentee ballot without being accused of election fraud

Let Freedom Ring
For All Americans
Not just the 1%  – the haves, while
The 99% bare the burden and suffer the haves

A few years ago, was the 60th Anniversary of Dr. King’s march on Frankfort
We united as one, noting how far we’d come, but
Acknowledged, we still had work to do 

I sit here confused
In shock
As I witness our forward motion,
Momentum
Halted and reversed
Freedoms being reduced and
Removed

Category
Poem

parasite, eating for three

invaded my life in every unbearable way,

beyond tapeworm and cavities

beyond broken hands and migraines

 

you were a part of me

and you shouldn’t have been

 

i loved you without realizing

lived with you without realizing

and suffered before realizing 

 

now i struggle to sit across from you

at poker, at Cheddar’s, my mom’s house

but there you stay

 

so here i stay

Registration photo of H.P. Shaw for the LexPoMo 2026 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

A revised serenity prayer

god grant me
the serenity to change the things 
i can’t 
i’ve tried the
acceptance 
and all the other 
grief stages 
that come before it
and none of it has worked so far
i’ve lived one day
at a time
and accepted 
my hardships
but still 
it’s all stayed the
same

Registration photo of RUDY THOMAS for the LexPoMo 2026 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Glenn

                        Glenn

            Glenn was 12 years old
            when his appendix burst
            and he died
            on the operating table.
^
 ^         I never met him.
            I was in the fourth grade
            I remember standing outside,
            watching Dad
^
^           drive up the gravel road,
            headed to his sister’s house
            in Ohio,
            for the funeral.
^
 ^         He was gone three,
            four,
            or five days.
            I can’t remember.
            

Registration photo of M.Kinney for the LexPoMo 2026 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Wet Grass

I stepped onto the wet grass.  My bare feet felt so strange,
but good, I mean, and familiar.  Then a picture as clear as glass
in a freshly washed window appeared in my mind’s eye, and
I had to stand perfectly still to resist the urge to step into it.

There I saw myself, just a girl with braids wrapped around her head,
dressed in calico with ruffles of sort and rough worn sandles on her feet.
I saw myself slip the sandals off my feet and step into the deep grass.
My own face brightened and I could hear laughter and I remembered.

I remembered how much I loved the feel of wet grass
on my feet.

Registration photo of Katrina Rolfsen for the LexPoMo 2026 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Nothing Irritates Me

If I were to crack
open a fortune cookie
right now, it might read,
“Anger without object is
a vomit stain on carpet.”

Registration photo of Austen for the LexPoMo 2026 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

A dream in which I turn down Silas House

Is there a term for when you narrate and critique 
your own weird lucid dream as it premiers 
in the theater of your sleeping mind?

I suppose my subconscious chose him because I admire his writing
or because he seems warm and approachable at local events; 
he definitely wasn’t typecast. 

I realize he has friends who may read this and share it,
which would be a little embarrassing for me,
but, I suspect, pretty entertaining for him.

When Dream Silas offered me the cocaine 
(possibly heroin- that’s snortable, yes?) he was being quite 
pushy, actually. Uncharacteristically snobby and aggressive.

What bothers me most is that I felt the need to explain (?)
Oh I shouldn’t; I have to get up at 5:00 AM on school days, 
I have kids in my face at 7:15, can you believe?

I tried to side coach myself: Just say, No thanks, I don’t do hard drugs, Silas. 
I don’t even know you very well. Or where you procured this angel dust 
(wait- is that PCP, the one that makes people fight like they can’t feel pain?).

I whispered into my headset to whomever was on the other end, 
Who wrote this? Absurd! What -she can’t have freedom or creative energy 
when she’s exhausted from her job? Oh… 

Registration photo of Allen Blair for the LexPoMo 2026 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

wet road on the Way home

withering glaze
whispered song

intricate
hope
forever
rich

wake so near

Registration photo of Samuel Collins Hicks for the LexPoMo 2026 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

An Evening Prayer (Revised)

Dear God,
This was definitely a good one
the sun. the breeze. the clouds
all added up to the sort of day they make postcards about

the meals. the naps. the kisses
pre-, mid-, and post-coital blisses with the one you made me for

Oh please may we pass safely through the night,
in the heavenly hopes of more days like this good one we made