Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge (#LexPoMo)

Brother Buck Markowitz

Category

Poem

6/26/25

MY WEEDS

No thank you,
I’m not interested in your lawn service,
I happen to like dandelions,
So do bees.

Antheia

Category

Poem

6/26/25

Lord, son, your back hurts?
Must’ve pulled it lugging around
Down through the mines day in and
Day out.
Well, we got real good news for you!
Over at Purdue, they got something brand new
To take all that pain away.
Ain’t even gonna cost you all that much, neither.
Just pay a visit on down to your doctor,
The one you’ve been seeing since you was
A tyke;
Tell him about the back pain and he’ll give you
A prescription,
Just like that,
In and out real quick like all the rest of his patients
Day in
And day out.
The pill’s gonna go down nice and easy,
Then you ain’t gonna feel a thing.
Relief like you never known it before.
You’ll be mighty glad you got your hands
On some Oxy!
Why, Sarah’s cousin up the holler’ll pay you real good money
For just a pill or two.
His whole paycheck for a portion of your
Prescription –
Cause that’s how good them pills are.
Why don’tcha go on back and get a refill
Just in case?
Trust me, son,
Once you get going on these bad babies,
Y’ain’t gonna ever wanna run out.

Goldie

Category

Poem

6/26/25

I’m a doll-house medic

I’m a doll-house medic.

I find myself salving

the cauliflower ear

of a concrete jockey

some jackass rashly

painted too pink to be

even considered

a drunken homunculus,

trammeled-tarantula stanchion

tangramming chip by chip this

witless expression of awe or glory

or scratched serendipity, sunk

in some swollen stoma stabbed in the

toe of a jelly-bean-boiled

stack-laminate jenga post-

mastectomy shoppe by the bygone

six-dollar milkshake store.

Six dollar shake store—Jesus.

Happened to frequent the shake store, yes.

They were retrofitting it. Once,

in a hedgerow coif of ersatz English ivy,

was scribbled in wriggling neon,

My God, you’re beautiful. Now,

it was dubbed, Rebound, an anemic

marquee bent mirroring spindly

bone to be read as, now

thrice in passing,

Do Right and

Kill Everything, maybe

an awkward anagram—Jesus, Miriam, Joseph

Beth—

It made the Dairy Queen

slounch like an Auschwitz

shower cap fixed with a

winking propeller.

I’ve a waffle-coned

wrought iron armature

‘twixt my teeth—and

what was this plaster,

stodgy as sheetrock

snapped in a fizzling fit about

who brayed bird whistles better,

supposed to be—blood, say. Restless

legs and a nose like a dog whistle,

finicky spittle, Sibelius, swans in the

snowflakes, puddling milk-solid

skin, and my wry-necked spine like

the rheumatoid bread ties choked round

wire-wrapped knuckles and

some instructive finger, groping

your throat for a dulcet pulse. Just

throw me a goddamned

bone, already. Let’s make something,

anything out these lath board breasts. Recall,

how a bird whistle rattles the talc

or the spoondrift-sleep-rocks clean

from a wincing window, sills lolled,

lapping at cracks in the chockablock

sidewalk, veins of a manged or

manicured hydra pressed from

the same irrepressible humus

as you, my love, too pink to be

real—the same thrawn spark that

urges us, too, the pink elephants

scrunched from a hundred

forgotten carnations, to mulishly

bury our dead; how the city had

swollen from litters of retrofitted

graveyards, lest we forget it. Now,

how your scrofulous eyes, like

listing Adena mounds thundering

under the undulous marl

what alarming god had

disturbed them from—forevermore

maybe transfixed in distorted explosion,

the beached whale’s bone-studded waiting room;

all in the name of eternity teasing

a dryad’s wrist to a dowser’s wand,

as an ash tree groomed to a novelty

baby spoon, something

that even the jellied burgoo refuses

to study or cling to.

Lillian Bramble

Category

Poem

6/26/25

coercive restraint therapy

Two half brain lobe split fractured separated + the strawberry jam tastes like it did ______ summers ago- I know technically we don’t know each other yet but it still tastes like the back of your neck might. You are a massive and snarling and beautiful beast. Or maybe I am- will be. Might be sometimes. Anyway, it’s too hot for anything but toast and diluted pink lemonade, and I can’t hear anything you’re saying from across the room like that- it’s like being inside a dream, trying to warn or plead or something but your feet won’t move and your throat is swelling shut. Are you at all familiar with that feeling?

Winter Dawn Burns

Category

Poem

6/26/25

Nature’s Gazette

Nature’s Gazette:

The glistening beads

on Japanese Maple leaves

cling to the daybreak

An amplified dew collects

insect and bird images

A sweet water feast

for hummingbirds, ants, and bees

A ruby-breasted

bird sweeps in with the cool breeze

The spice of Russian Sage waves

A lone white Lily

pattered black from last night’s rain

Still holds joyfulness

without a complication

Then, the Racer snake arrives

A blending balm of

Lilac, Lavender and Rose

holds the morning calm

Puddles ripple with tadpoles

Now, their lives have just begun

©️Winter Dawn Burns

Danielle Valenilla ∞

Category

Poem

6/26/25

I Am That Estranged, Weird Aunt

that relative with too many plants
and music your parents don’t listen to
who is rarely at the family gatherings
but always sends you love on your birthday

that relative that they call “different” or “troubled”
with a multi-colored flag and a weird, earthy smell at their house
who seems to speak in fortune cookie, declaring
it takes courage to be yourself and
you can always come to me when you’re scared

that relative with eclectic hobbies
like collaging and beadwork and making jambalaya
who has pets that live indoors but
caretakes the creatures who live in the trees

i find that i am accidentally that estranged, weird aunt
because i was also that observant, curious, isolated kid
who needed a relative like me, a model to show
that you can be who you are someday and still survive it