Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge (#LexPoMo)

Category

Poem

DROMOMANIA

“Pathological tourism” or wanderlust?
The body wants to body, which is to say,
to be placed, a flesh-vase on the mantle
of the world—and what will go in that vase,
and where must we go to find it, and what if
it only lasts so long, subject to wilting,
and thus requires us to find again
the right inhabitant, temporary as it may be?

Tom Hunley

Category

Poem

6/16/25

My Almost-Stepfather, Younger than Me, and the Basketball Game We Lost against Five Amerasian Prostitutes

So Mike and Mom met right around her birthday.

Her forty-fifth, while I was twenty-three

and Mike was only twenty-one. She’d made

a fair amount of money editing

for Microsoft. She spent it on a pair

of adjacent apartments, where she stayed

along with Amerasian refugees,

the left-behinds of soldiers in Vietnam.

She trained them all to call her Mom.

My girlfriend at the time must have been so

confused by all the hues when asked to take

our “family photo.” I could not explain.

One day Mom said the other refugees

were picking on poor Mike because he was

hermaphroditic, male and female parts.

But then she said he and she were in love

and they moved to a townhouse of their own.

He shoved a tiny diamond in my face.

I think it was an earring that she’d stuffed

into a ring, and he said Marry. Oof.

Soon I moved to Spokane for graduate school.

The news said Seattle cops had busted up

an Amerasian prostitution ring,

and I knew that my mom would get involved.

I rode the Greyhound out, and sure enough:

she’d filled the townhouse with those prostitutes.

They challenged me and Mike in basketball,

a game of two-on-five. We held our own

until Mike benched himself, and I had no one

to pass to, which, I think, works pretty well

as metaphor of sorts for all those years

I scratched my head and tried to make some sense

of something senseless. I do not recall

the final score, but those five whores sure wore

me down and schooled me on that sweaty court.

Mike lost his index finger while at work

at Midas Muffler and he said “Maybe

I won’t work there no more.” And yet he did.

One day a Midas colleague with a truck

helped Mike move out. The air was thick. The air

was always thick. She told Mike’s co-worker

“You’re breaking up a happy home.” To which

he said “Mike asked for help.” Hey Mike, you were

A Motherfucker, but I wish you well.

I never blamed you. Not one bit. In fact

I’m glad you made it out almost intact.

Gaby Bedetti

Category

Poem

6/16/25

Summer Pop-Up Book Sale at The Burl

Saturday afternoon and shoppers browse tables
piled high with fiction, history,
and biography, rows of books
ready for reading while buyers
consider a Liquid Sword, Colossus, or Drifter.
Traffic cams of the No Kings protest
flicker on the phone. Balmy breezes
drift through the repurposed garage doors.
American tunes pop through the speakers.
Customers sip, talk books, their dogs
in tow. A slow moving train crawls
down the tracks, most of the cars
heavily graffitied.

Tabitha Dial

Category

Poem

6/16/25

Sunflowers Unknown

There were 7 clusters of seedlings. A beam
of 10 possible

sunflowers. But there are none tonight.

Was it the work of a greedy dove couple?

Were they dug up by a crepuscular rodent

under the fading light?

Direct sow them early (and often, if you have the heart).

But remember that each year is different,

each variety of plant plays its part.

The cucumbers are slow this year, since
the days have been chill.

But the bush beans aren’t shy– they have
the blooms and the will.

There’s time to try again this year,

but I think I’m done with the heartbreak.
What to do with a 16 foot trench

dug out for sunflowers?

The hardy cherry tomato

yields seven green promises

but bringing up seedlings
leaves my spirits in a state.

Evyn Weaver

Category

Poem

6/16/25

Company

Walking through cedar wood
You’re around me
not even touching
a cloud of strawberry
and soft and
l o v e r
whispered through trees
a wind quiet enough
over gabled roofs
so nobody could ever hear

Ahead, a stream
glittering like broken glass
a bridge of rotted wood
I guess we’re at an impasse

Will you cross with me?
Wade through
as I warm your side?

Is it ok?
It’s what I want now
someone to squish the bugs
pitch the tent

I am waking up by myself
You’re off, packing pots and pans
every pale morning, until one day
maybe all I’ll see is a trail of boot prints
turned back the way they came

and I’m still going forward
the wide green world
washing over and through me
impossibly, a breath
filling me to bursting
Looking out at distant yellow windows
lit, accompanied, alive
I will have to learn to not be alone.

Marie Slone

Category

Poem

6/16/25

Lady’s Slippers

In the midst of weeds and grass
at Mamaw’s house
I found Lady’s Slippers.

Pink, purple, smooth and strange.
They didn’t seem to belong
in the landscape all around them.

Delicate and beautiful.
I imagined fairies were safely tucked
down inside their lovely pouches.

Mamaw worked in her garden
even in a skirt.
The old cellar filled with jars
and tastes I’ll never find again.

Her dark hair always pinned
and brown eyes twinkling
at the sound of babies laughing.

Hands so strong
they churned out butter and biscuits.
But so gentle when a knee scrape
needed her salve.

Winter Dawn Burns

Category

Poem

6/16/25

Monday Morning Migraine

Monday Morning Migraine:

I value your time

So I am keeping this short

This is the haiku

Linda Meg Frith

Category

Poem

6/16/25

Summers in Dallas

Growing up in a family of eight,

never a dull moment, playing

in the sprinklers, laying out

under the stars, finding the Big Dipper

for the first time.

Friends corralling in the middle

of the street, yelling Red Rover

Red Rover, let Linda come over,

it was always hot and muggy,

but who cares? That’s what sprinklers

are for, and swimming pools,

and standing in front of water coolers,

letting the cool breezes blow

against bare skin.

It wasn’t all fun and games,

The yelling from the garage

when Daddy pulled in to park

and someone’s bicycle was thrown

down in the parking spot,

someone who was in a hurry

to go inside and pour a glass of lemonade,

someone who didn’t know our father

couldn’t control his temper,

someone who didn’t live with the fear

that comes from living with a father

who cursed and bellowed,

someone who never felt the fury

of his fists upon your face,

someone with a father who could love.

Quackstar

Category

Poem

6/16/25

River

A month of poems.
Fantastic, I thought;
I have so many swirling, bubbling streams
conscious and unconscious
looking for an outlet.
A torrent of passion and frustration and heartache at the source
somehow as reality crested the waterfall edge
I dried up.

I search for the words
to carry all of this somewhere beyond me
rather than slowly drowning every cell of my body
in the rising tide
of my decision.

EDL

Category

Poem

6/16/25

Euphoria

I have spent so much time dreaming of you,
expecting you to find someone else to marry and have kids with.
The dreams of you and me made me happy,
even while I had no faith in them ever coming true.
Now that I suddenly got you,
reality is like being high on the best drugs I’ve ever done.

I’m so terrified.

Not of the future I want with you,
but of my own ability to fuck shit up and lose you again.

My guess is that I’ve fallen so hard,
I’ve almost forgotten my commitment issues.

Help us keep on giving.