Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge (#LexPoMo)

Alissa Sammarco

Category

Poem

6/19/24

Holiday on Pluto

We wake from that dreamless land
cocooned for almost 10 years,
tubes down our throats.
Charlie coughs up what feels like a hairball.
Miranda files her nails to sharp points,
poking holes in the plastic wrap packaging.
You tell me that you can’t remember,
that my face is not the woman you signed up for,
that somehow, ten years ago,
the babies were switched at birth.
All the nurses said it could never happened.
But here we stand on Pluto,
holding hands with a stranger,
plucking the ice crystals from between our toes.

Sav Noël Hoover

Category

Poem

6/19/24

THE BEACH HOUSE

my conch shell knees still clank together
like some vintage enamelware pots
now lost and rusted in a beach house
and sometimes I breathe easy, forget

the years of tide, catching breath on shore
the rash where the chain dents my ankle
bones waiting, a ribbon through my ribs
keeping score ’til I’m pulled back under

Category

Poem

6/19/24

What made you a better poet than me

was everything left unsaid.

You always were more whisper

than girl, so naturally you haunt me

most.

I put quarters in the washer

and suddenly they’re your pale,

freckled fingers counting

pennies for the vending machine.

I tiptoe across the carpet and now

I’m in that echoey gym, ignoring

the arrogant trumpets and listening

to you lament your inability to march

heel-toe.

I call something egg-cellent

and the words land amid blank stares.

You would have said it before I could,

or perhaps passed me the mic.

You could always tell when I was about

to crack a joke, said I smiled too early

and ruined the delivery.

Everything seemed so funny then.

Now I sit on park benches alone

and cannot seem to summon my humor.

Banished with you, I suppose.

You always did leave

without saying goodbye.

Your poetic justice, really,

a two-line poem I can’t even write

because I habitually say too much.

Isn’t that why you’re gone?

What made you a better poet than me

You always did leave

without saying goodbye.

Michele LeNoir

Category

Poem

6/19/24

nature reading, a nonet

reading the clouds takes some time today.
light cumulus puffs, brilliant white–
bright blue behind, a calm day.
intuitive thoughts see
reason to be still,
reason to watch
nature’s thoughts
float on
by.

Nancy Jentsch

Category

Poem

6/19/24

A Solitary Sprout

I woke this morning, my muse,
mere vapor in the heat, rising
almost beyond my grasp.
Suddenly alert, like a weary
mother wakened by her baby’s
cry, I nabbed its fringes when
I glimpsed a solitary sprout
in my rows of beans. If seeds
store eons of energy to free
themselves from soil’s blindfold,
I, too, can be the one to water all
till muse’s mist falls as rain—
the beans, the verses, too.

Kim Kayne Shaver

Category

Poem

6/19/24

Sitting on the Porch with Them

He looks from his book
She twirls hair around fingers
They are not talking

Taunja

Category

Poem

6/19/24

No More

When I stand in a lane lit by streetlight & crescent
what is my vanishing point?

When I know the pinprick luminescence I see
is from dead stars, do I vanish?

When temples & churches perch like red-
shouldered hawks on thin shadowed lots
between car dealers & cell towers
is that the moment?

When a new moon casts its deep onyx, erasing
hill & house, will I vanish then?

Or will I vanish with the tiger owl as she turns
her head to regard me with moon-embroidered
eyes & face like a cinnamon disc—
                                                    will I live in her
                                                    feathers so like
                                                    the bark of pines
                                                    that are no more?

~inspired by Maria Brzozowska’s “Vanishing Point”

Jazzy

Category

Poem

6/19/24

Today is June 19, 2024

Juneteenth
A day to celebrate the news of freedom
It came two and a half years late
The Emancipation proclaimed all slaves free
Yet slaves in Galveston, TX didn’t know
They worked
Shed blood, sweat, and tears
For two and a half long years
Until that wonderful 19th day of June 1865
Granger’s men delivered General Order No. 3
Here ye, Here ye all enslaved people are free
But all were not free
The news was still hidden from some of the enslaved
Many Texas enslaved didn’t receive their freedom until 1866
Plantation owners held the chains tight
Concealed the news and kept it out of sight
Even today we celebrate that freedom
But are we truly free

Philip Corley

Category

Poem

6/19/24

A Friend Comments on Never Seeing Me Wasted

I keep

my mind

on a tight leash

no slack

having learned

nothing good

ever comes

from losing
control.

Why
make memories

if there’s not enough

sobriety

to cement them?

I want
to remember

all

of you.

I’ll get buzzed

a little tipsy

able to enjoy myself.

I just
don’t care

to be

an invalid.

Drunk people

say stupid shit

or speak stupid truth.
When hearts
gets involved
the slightest signals
get turned
into diabolical riddles.

I don’t want
to lead
you on
just how
I’d like
not
to be led on.

This isn’t to say I don’t have moments of irresponsibility
when memory is ensnared in temporary brownouts.
I was shocked to learn that you and I linked arms last week.
I have no recollection of making that joke in your all’s company.
Not too long ago, there is a night that exists as a fill-in-the-blanks.
mixed with suggestive smiles and tantalizing flirtations, but
what in the whole wide world did we talk so long about?

Why do I have this feeling that we kissed.
without any recall of the press of your lips
or how our magnetic charges.
might have gotten swapped?

Clouds are bad enough
stacked in blackened skies.
I don’t need to invite
the fog
into my brain.

Life
is hard
even when
we know all the answers.
Best not add
any
uncomfortably
difficult to answer
questions.

And that is why
I make
the effort
to keep
my mind
on its tight leash.

Leah Tenney

Category

Poem

6/19/24

sweet baby James

August 1983…

Two little girls on tiptoes, freshly washed and pajama’d, Ohio summer night, wet hair, teddy bears tucked under chins
Craning, giraffing our necks through the open bedroom window to catch the music floating by in waves like an aurora

Fireflies blinking golden- green, dancing with us to the voice drifting overland from the open-air concert a few miles away, around the trees, across the green lawn and into this old house

There is a young cowboy, who lives on the range
His horse and his cattle are his only companions
He works in the saddle and he sleeps in the canyons
Waiting for summer, his pastures to change

Mama standing by making sure we don’t lean out too far
Wishing we had butterfly nets to save all the notes in mason jars
“Mama, can you hear it?!”, I glow, because it’s magic
It’s just for us
I know it’s just for us

And as the moon rises, he sits by his fire
Thinkin’ about women and glasses of beer
Closing his eyes as the doggies retire
He sings out a song which is soft, but it’s clear
As if maybe someone could hear

I remember our smiles as we sang along, kid voices raised with conviction, pretending to understand the lyrics, waltzing a memory to hold onto forever.

Little sister yawns, lids getting heavy,

after all, after-dark in August is up-too-late for little girls.

But, mama twinkles, bedtimes be damned

We can always stay up for magic.

Now, the first of December was covered with snow
So was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston
Don’t the Berkshires seem dreamlike on account of that frostin’
With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go

Magic in what must have been a fraught day for her

Back in the bedroom she grew up in

Back in the home she couldn’t wait to leave at 18

A home that lost a young mother to cancer

A home with a father who hit and humiliated

Gritting through another stingy, stinging dinner at his table,

but there were grandchildren now

There’s a song that they sing when they take to the highway
A song that they sing when they take to the sea
A song that they sing of their home in the sky
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
But singing works just fine for me

I wonder if she knows how happy she made us that night, years before any storms hit our own family,
wonder if she knows how close I hold this, still

I wonder if she felt the years slipping away for a moment, her own little girls singing summer sweetness back in time to the little girl she used to be…

I hope so
I hope so

So goodnight, you moonlight ladies
Rockabye, sweet baby James
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Won’t you let me go down in my dreams?
And rockabye, sweet baby James

https://concerts.fandom.com/wiki/August_1-2,_1983_Blossom_Music_Center,_Cuyahoga_Falls,_OH

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