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

contemplation on resources

when I look outside
and catch the eye of my brother  my sister  my college roommates
I find myself short of supply
it doesn’t take much to play the hand of comparison and fold at ‘lack’

last week I was able to leave my car in the garage
my two feet took me to main street
across the park 
down lanes with my dog  waving at neighbors smiling with mug in hand

this week my hands deep in the soil
holding a shovel and rake  making things grow
tending the crack where storms seep in   fixed it
washing the doorframe overdue for cleansing  its face in the shade grown grey  done
picking daisy  lilies  a rose or two
bouquet  this existence
from the inside

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

Sixpence & Rye

I wake with the old rhyme in my head,
wondering why anyone would bake
two dozen live blackbirds in a pie.
Sounds neither ethical nor sanitary.

Wondering why anyone would bake
this confounding atrocity which
sounds neither ethical nor sanitary,
I turn, as one does, to Google.

Sounds neither ethical nor sanitary,
this elaborate Renaissance party trick.
I turn, as one does, to Google,
imagine a flock on the wing in a banquet hall.

I turn, as one does, to Google.
Two dozen live blackbirds in a pie.
Imagine a flock on the wing in a banquet hall.
I wake with the old rhyme in my head.

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

In the dream is a place

called the White House Food Shop:
It was our family’s livelihood
and the place we all worked
as kids.
(Even the youngest
carried empties redeemed
for pennies to the back room.)
I learned how to make change
counting backwards, a skill
not needed today when a machine
adds for us. But I can still do it.  

In the dream I wait on customers
but I cannot remember what anything
costs. I cannot add up the bill,
and Dad is busy. I think I might
make up the prices, but hesitate.  

In the dream I am never certain.  

In the dream it is closing time
but the store fills up with customers:
This is the legacy of Dad
who never turned anyone away
(even the man who brought in a box
of television tubes to test in the “U-Test-Em”
machine Dad installed to make a few extra bucks,
on a Sunday afternoon when it was time to go).  

That was my Father and I hated to disappoint him
by my dreamtime ignorance. Even when i awake
I am not certain and
I hate to disappoint him.

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

Fire Upon the Vineyard

The blackbirds’ hearts
crack and pop like little coals.
Wispy clouds move along the sky’s edge,
circling wide.

Heat – the kind that drinks the land dry –
curdles milk and parts lovers.
Cows and people hide inside the river.
Black fish keep swarming in,
hungry for soap.

The ponds turn into swarms of butterflies,
and the old men’s minds evaporate into the sky –
they leave to look for their dead mothers.

Once they start seeking, they shall find each other.

I lie down close to this earth, and turn into earth
as bugs begin to walk across me.
Through the wild herbs, a crack shoots forward
passing straight through my heart.

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

(on seeing some three young women, sprawled out amongst church chimes, sporting the same black, over-sized hoodie affording its back to a local contractor)

Why’s everyone dressed

for their funeral, playing
at stage hand screwing
their smoke through the
drooling duvytene leg of a
crouching god stuck laying 
no more than a hard-
ly rotten and wall-
owed-out egg—the
 
show must go
as the body goes,
as the swaddling rots
or clots, made one with the
flesh or those sentiments
flesh is obsessed with—tides
 
shall rise and writhe and falter and
fall. See the horseshoe crab 
with his tail lolled, blue
as the blue-blooded
banes bent strangling 
Gaia for something
greener even—a
 
child unwinds from the ether a
flapping contraption scudding
Lake Michigan clean, as Buraku-
min scientists smile at germs seen
 
suckling swollen
plastics back into 
less than the
deaths they were 
humbly or clumsily 
wrought from. Where’s 
 
the applause—I just saw
Amy Goodman, playing
at Santa Claus, airing
the coal-clotted faults of men,
while I tie tails of dough, man-
ifesting a festering, old, and
low ouroboros in soft-baked 
Jewish pretzels. I must think,
 
ulcerous holes abound-
ing in honeycomb, what of the
dulling decay, the dumpster
fire, the thrashing quay, the
mill stone hanged all alba-
tross soft and doddering
under the chin of an
adamite tinsmith; must think
 
some shade more than diaphonous
grey or black cracks hacking up 
out of the holy and roiling
quantum foam, must see
a bit more than a hole
in the heart of bagel,
rolled and boiled and baked—
some sweet little frame for all
of that sluthering steam escaping
 
Registration photo of Manny Grimaldi for the LexPoMo 2026 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Japanese Italian Theatre

The shrike is a bird that saves the guts for later. She ravages the cavities and orbitals of victims and stuffs juicy booty in trees.

She prepares small fish caught in tiny waters. She snacks a bit on their middles and prepares them with haste, then hides the goods within nooks and caves.

Everyday, everywhere she accomplishes little miracles without failure.

In the course of Italian cuisine, every minute dumpling has ingredients.

Take and combine:

1)  finely shredded parmigiano reggiano
2)  smashed ricotta
3)  mozzarella
4)  fontina 
5)  one large egg, oregano, basil, pinched
     with garlic to taste.

Shrikes are noted for finding a place to impale and field dress their victims.  The shrike takes little parcels out to various locations for snacking. They choose a spike of barbed wire, a branch, or a cactus needle. They don’t have the patience for making jerky. 

This is kabuki-sushi of the air and field.

Category
Poem

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

It is not often that I recall my dreams
But like finding a rare coin
Treasured dreams of my mother live
Beyond the dark of night  

Some are sweet like golden honey
Others are savory like salt on a raw wound
I do not determine
What feeds my soul
Or depletes my appetite  

The time we spent
Dining at her favorite restaurant
Traipsing across the Swiss Alps
Sipping Evian water in Evain, France
Is now recalled
Upon a memory foam pillow
 
When night crawls behind the sun
And dawn awakens me
I ache for her presence
And hold every remembrance close to me

Category
Poem

So very peri…..

Acne
Chin hair
Thinning hair
Dry skin
Oily skin
Itchy skin
Aching hip
Sweating nights

Don’t fucking look at me or chew too loudly

Wild sleep
No sleep
Not hungry and no appetite
Yet damn if I haven’t gained 20lb this week.

Anti anxiety

Anti depressant
Antisocial
And invisible.

But I can pay cash for shoes and therapy

And I can buy my own flowers
So there’s that……

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

Long Live the King

I take it as comfort,
The words on the old king’s tomb:
You are not the first,
You will not be the last

The words on the old king’s tomb,
The new king scoffed as he read them
You will not be the last
Just as he began his reign

The new king scoffed as he read them,
But he soon fell to ruin
Just as he began his reign.
And then a rival took his crown

But he soon fell to ruin
Just as the tomb foretold,
And then a rival took his crown
With arrogance untempered

Just as the tomb foretold,
King after king
With arrogance untempered,
Fall after fall

King after king
We sweep up the ashes.
Fall after fall,
We always rebuild

We sweep up the ashes.
You are not the first—
We always rebuild.
I take it as comfort.

Category
Poem

Nightfall

A simple ritual of sitting
on the front porch on a summer’s
evening was laid to rest with my
generation.  We watched the flight
of lightning bugs, and listened
for the call of the whippoorwill.
More than anything else, we talked,
sharing our hopes and deams far
into the night.  Texting with our
family just isn’t the same.