Registration photo of Jess Bee for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Mute Your Future Phones: A Radio Segment

This is Sneaker from the Sneaker and Beeker Morning Show. The date is June 16th, 2044 and the weather is snow. We’re back with another installment of “Court Cases Gone Wild” and, Beeker, it’s a doozy. Today we’re discussing the rise of legal lying in 2028’s Flowers vs Floozy. 

 
Yep, Sneaker, they say the court room was deadly quiet on a busy day when suddenly, a jingle rang out from an abandoned Pixel 10A. Let’s hear that old rendition:
 
Are you suffering from the lying condition?
We’re back with a new honesty edition.
Teeth with letters you can’t spit out
A board game masquerading as a mouth
Suck the enamel’s deep grooves
Flip them until the board skews
Nine out of ten dentists agree 
Nothing said comes for free
So when you’re guilty and in doubt 
Open wide and Smile Shout ™️
 
The star witness had mentioned that Floozy was shady, and it turned out the phone was registered to his old lady. She later said that the defendant was cheap and lacked style, so he had reached the end of the 30-day free trial. When he opened up his mouth to lie that day, the ad music volume was up all the way. The bailiffs asked Ms. Floozy to leave but the damage was done. The defendant had turned a dark shade of plum. The jury discussed for over thirty-six hours whether the blame was Floozy or Flowers. It was already a trial of men with clout and the first time anyone publicly used Smile Shout ™️. 
 
The video reached a million views before the end of the week. Smile Shout ™️ capitalized on the public intrigue. They created a way to make lying in style, and now we’ll be feeling the effects for a while. Floozy was convicted but still reached fame, and it was almost surprising how many voted his name.

Sneaker, he was truly a monster. We’ll be taking calls to discuss after a word from our sponsors!

Registration photo of Amy Le Ann Richardson for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

The Barrel Frog

There’s a rain barrel
outside under our bedroom window.
This time of year, there’s a frog

clinging to its edge hollering out every night.
I can’t remember the first year we noticed it,
but it’s become one of those things I expect.

A phenological constant in mid-June,
and although I know it’s not the same frog
from years past, it carries that same sound

echoing into the barrel and out across the
yard yearning for a lover to fulfill its destiny,
to pass down those genes bringing

babies back here to holler some more.
It’s a dollop of wonder in this big ole
mess of a world, one of those things

making me hold on to notions that
maybe everything will be okay.

Category
Poem

night haiku – non traditional

 

summer night
I whisper to
……….fireflies

Registration photo of Bing for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

16 – i spilled on myself

a crisp white tee is

nothing but a magnet for

the brightest red sauce.

Registration photo of Samar Jade for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

6/16/24 10:05 pm EST

There is no poem singing in me today. 
only 
grief. 

Category
Poem

Highway Thoughts

The long stretch of highway ahead

The sun beaming through my windshield

I pass all of these cars

Full of people I’ll never meet

I guess growing up in a small town

I could never understand how big the world really is

How many people love the same songs as me

How many people feel deeply like I do

How every single one of these cars

Has someone in it that’s lost in their own thoughts

Maybe turning the music up to drown them out like I am

Or maybe they’re singing with their best friend

Or just married

Or finally escaping their own small town

And these highway thoughts

Both terrify me,

And excite

Registration photo of Samuel Collins Hicks for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Quantity Over Quality

Toss and turn for ten
fraught hours or sleep sweet for five?
Quantity. Always.

Registration photo of Stefan Delipoglou for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

The Gutter and Her Lover / Entitlement as Indictment 

allured as imaginary anti-anglerfish 

accrue immurement in increments 
through entering into entireties of emptiness
as an accord which affords opportunities
to see entire holons as they truly are 
somewhere underneath eyes wide open
all above seems so distant in retrospect 
and looking forward 
Registration photo of Morgan Evans for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

I’m a Product

I’m a product of an old drunk
Madly and toxically,
My mother and father
Stormed each others lives,
Yelling, punching, throwing their children around,
And hitting our heads against the wall
Of the unstable single-wide trailer down by the river
On the train tracks of Eastern Kentucky

I’m a product of several dads,
Several strangers,
And cut-out hearts with crayons and magnets
To display for the next one

I’m a product of bad touch
And not being quite sure if that was trafficking
But knowing their were drugs involved

I”m a product of old truck drivers who drank too much bourbon
And hit the kids a little too much
In the old cement building next to the bar
In the rundown town you drive past

I’m a product of the hidden hollers,
The old farmhouse where torture happened 
And tears ruined my favorite shirts ‘cause I chewed out their necks

I’m a product of the only sweet old man in my life 
That belly laughed and watched cartoons,
But I’m pretty sure he knew what Nanny was doing

I’m a product,
I was scanned,
Passed around,
And thrown in the trash

I’m no longer a product

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Category
Poem

upon hearing Rain crows

she never liked
the rain crow’s call
too sad, when the weekend
included visiting graves,
leaving a few plastic
flowers we’d pick up
by Labor Day, or before
yet the deed’s done
and now we sit
in porch swing twilight
happy as we listen
to mournful birdsound