Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge (#LexPoMo)

Category

Poem

Falling Asleep

Every night as I am falling to sleep
you will never catch me counting sheep

I close my eyes breathing in and then out
in with the positive and out with the doubt

I think of at least one thing that brought a smile to my face
and the messy parts I extend myself some much needed grace

Stephanie Mojica

Category

Poem

6/29/24

Powerful

Perfectionism applied to
Others, but never
Woven into their own work.
Eradicating self esteem as they
Rabidly utter
Falsehoods to
Uplift themselves, for they
Lack love and respect for anyone else.

Susie Slusher

Category

Poem

6/29/24

Sponge

I want to soak it all up.

Every
Last
Drop.

I want to be drenched.
Absolutely sopping– filled to the brim.

‘Til the sun poisons me,
And I start to mold.

I want to feel this full
All the time.

Patrick Miles

Category

Poem

6/29/24

my memory bank

is too big
to fail

now how about
a bailout

Shawn Justice

Category

Poem

6/29/24

June

Flew by
whirling and twirling
and “debating” (using this term loosely)

Sights:
anxious hummingbirds
tired teacher friends
happy babies swimming
fat elusive raindrops
two poorly chosen choices in suits

Scents:
comfortingly familiar Coppertone
sweet petunias
grilled burgers with cheese
crisp protective chlorine
burning country

Sounds:
gurgling wispy giggles
furiously scratching pen
obnoxious speed boat
“Will you come see me?”
“You have the morals of an alley cat”

Feelings:
unending found joy
deep cavernous sorrow
giddy swelling anticipation
permanent gratitude
at a loss for words

Eager for July!

Lee Chottiner

Category

Poem

6/29/24

While Stopped on the Pennsylvania Turnpike

Trapped in traffic, tapping my brakes miles away from Somerset, PA,
where Wendy’s and Starbucks served weary travelers, and a Limestone,
domed place on a hill served notice that this was no typical town, but
a county seat, I thought of you in Maryland, alone with your father
visiting from Israel, unable to speak the language. You feared what those
two planes that murdered the towers, and one that wounded the Pentagon,
would mean for us. You came from a land where distance and war forced
many death warrants for lovers. What are we going to do? you had asked,
your words hanging like dead men from a gallows in my mind as I sat there…

… not far from the place
where citizens had faced their
decision to “roll.”

Leah Tenney

Category

Poem

6/29/24

me & you

might we be tree rings in the afterlife?
recording forever the ebb and flow of seasons?

i’d like to think so

drawing sun and earth inside us
growing strong and sure

unfolding new leaves every spring
parading our colors in the fall

i could happily spend eternity that way,
standing beside you
making memory into living tissue
our roots conversing daily
as they do now

Category

Poem

6/29/24

Mirror Selfie from Oz

My pale sky dress is spotted with

clouds—polka dots, not checkers,

but with the high-necked white

blouse, all I’m missing is a woven

wooden basket and red heels,

cropped curls too stubby to braid

notwithstanding.

I text my best friend a picture,

captioned “only hot girls cosplay

as Dorothy Gale by accident”.

She replies, “whimsical”. Meanwhile,

my mom, in response to my defense

that I didn’t want to be cold, quips,

“or cool?”

“Am I winning or losing if my mom

thinks I’m uncool?” is caption #2.

Ping! “I’d say winning,” reads the

little blue bubble, and the face

in the mirror smiles and decides

not to change. After all, Toto,

I think as I switch off the light,

we’re not in metaphorical Kansas

anymore.

Nancy Jentsch

Category

Poem

6/29/24

I am like a hummingbird

darting around collecting
no more than I need

feverishly beating my wings
just to stay in place

looking at others as if
I really see them

rejoicing in a voice hardly
anyone knows

while sipping daily nectar
from summer’s flora

costumed in ultra-reflective
jewel-tone plumage

all my energies focused on escape

Goldie

Category

Poem

6/29/24

Please pull this wagging finger loose, like a new year’s fortune teller upturned into chewing gum, gun smoke, mulligan stew, and the rueful rewrites raddling over your backbone, brusque as a wheat grass enema courting the bore of a swollen eclair

Let’s call a spade a spade

or a spade a sword

or a loy or whatever

crude garden tool

Christy had thought

he could slaughter his father with—

(lost to the edge of the occident,

edge of the accident,

accident whetted

to glisten with

wicker intention)

gripple complacency,

roll it out over your tongue now, twice,

and consider those

Change the way you give signs

scrunched ‘twixt char-scarred,

manacled, candle-snubbed

poles of poplar preening,

green as the virginal

lilacs plucked to mayoral laurels,

tidy as tempered teeth

or gods embossed in a

bas relief passed off as a

thoroughbred’s skull or a

pumpkin pared to a basketball

mocking some clove-footed

cockswain’s hackneyed, hiccuping glans—

all the ripe-nipple sigils of clabbering lexington.

Squeeze it out over your teeth

like one pans

indigestible emperor’s rice and

obsidian out of the tortuous porcelain

dais we, idly spiting the golden kawaya

no kami now daily, take for granted

much as a mule-kicked pulse

or the dulcet loll of the air plunged

tonguing our lungs for that feeling

of spongy sacs and the music box

bleat of our blood running rampant as

brumbies boxed in an under the table

race form, notary thumbprints forged.

Like one pans

three little foam rubber nipple ring images,

clackers on what curt bone-barbed boar

of a door-jammed dumb waiter, picking

its noose into sisal, banana peel, straws—

that fiberglass droplet of

milk crashed into a

crown-shaped splash,

froze over with wire

and fishing line tied

to the palate of what

quaint train stop staked

in Tukwila, like cream slipped

free from a godling’s coffee;

that bus driver

capoing every stop with

don’t forget to pay attention,

an echoing hand-drawn sign
akin to one reading,
Will dance for ice cream,

standing so proud of the dash

it was practically floating, my

bloating reflection

fixed in his ambered

lenses still, or a

part of me anyway,

evermore tracing his frames

like a fish-bowled guinea pig

coiling bouts of lamaze,

massaging a wart,

upstaging The Cramps

and their fairykin cohorts—;

and that braided belt

of a semi-feral human,

summoned to life by a kashmir

fishwife’s petticoat swaddling

three neopolitan poodles,

lapping Italian ice amid stints

at the ketamine clinic and playing

hooky, in triplicate, skirting their

Èrsh and Gaulish lessons to

sniff out discarded z-bars

out of the Hartland Zabar’s

chapter dumpster—that

galvanized work glove

cocked on the ring

and the forefinger,

digging for black-lipped

butts in the crack of the

sidewalk—see him there,

braying, praying, bawling, maybe

bent shyly reciting Pliny the Younger’s

account of Vesuvius doing

its spin on discarded Ys or Atlantis—don’t

avert your eyes. Now,

Change the way you give, they say,

for God or the Gorton fisherman glibly

forbid that you give him a dog-eaten quarter.

What was the plan now? Only

extinguished in that it’s illegal

to outlaw begging,

like raising the minimum wage,

or rent caps, or even, maybe, say,

adequate lodging that isn’t some

thrown-together, glued-together,

thirty-dollar-daily chemical closet,

murder hole window, et al.?

We got a van out there, and it’s

sweeping ’em up and it’s singing like

Funiculì, Funiculà churned out of an

ice cream truck, “Now, we got a job

for you, Adam, my man, out picking

up parks for an honest wage. Don’t

stand there and tell me you’d rather

beg, ’cause we outlawed beggin’, anyway.”

And we get them honest folks

that done been givin’ them beggars

their daily fixins and get ’em all

down with givin’ instead to a fund

that dares to give ’em a home,

a forever home. Fifteen grand

a month for just three years

and we’ll get all them homeless folk

out of here, off the streets, out on to

greener pastures, greener pastures,

guaranteed.

Who the fuck came up with that, that

crackerjack masterclass in thoughtless

crap?

Nobody paying rent, I’d say. And nobody

ever once wondering what it was like

to not have a toilet to talk to.

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