Poems, page 6

Mary Potts

Category

Poem

6/8/26

Just Write

Just write…

Infinite pages,
Infinite thoughts,
But now, pen to paper,
I become lost

Just write…

My face, expressive
As words, wordy
Treds led to Botox,
Seal up my 30’s

Darlene Rose DeMaria

Category

Poem

6/8/26

Dear Love,

Dedicated to all my fellow LexPoMo writers this one’s yours too . . .

Dear Love what would you have me know today?

You are beautifully talented beyond what you may deem your self to be
remember, deep sensitivity ~ an asset
self-less-ness a healing quality

consider your own needs
ask yourself what truly feels right and makes you happy
take the baton in your private and professional life and know
we are all in this together

give yourself more
realize the dream you’ve always wished for
yes, your someday island ache of wanting can now be satiated
remember, we need each other to fly in strong V-formation

digest the decadence of Goodwill
ease all energies of dissent
accept accolades of fluid uniting
reject rigid thoughts

laugh loudly
open to opulence
as we
vocalize victory in unison
as we
ignite this emancipation of Truth

Susie Slusher

Category

Poem

6/8/26

Cleaning Out the Garage

Teetering on the fine line between

A funeral and a wedding,

Everyone who ever felt like home to me

Stood in my house

As we devoured through every box left in it.

A mentally stimulating contradiction

Of everything and everyone I love,

Being somehow of use and also useless.

Kissing my knuckles and simmering

Into each crack and crevice of my life,

I couldn’t help but to stop and stare—

Their limbs ached sorting through

Every single part of me, indulging in

Everything I ever could be and have ever been.

Home is a forever evolving concept,

And it is a feeling, never a place.

There are almost 3 decades of me

Piled up in a dumpster, and I can’t help

But feel so loved.

Home is where the heart is,

And the ribcage is a box

Far too precious and prolific

To ever be picked through,

And especially not stored away.

Pauletta Hansel

Category

Poem

6/8/26

was once a boggy lake near
a creek which now is only
name. Mill Creek with no clatter
or grain. But under asphalt
and lawn beneath our feet, slosh
and gurgle of water, and
our basements are never dry.

Samantha Renee Ratcliffe

Category

Poem

6/8/26

On Wading An Ars Poetica

The elusive leech is here. A wired thought wraps its odd mouth around a big toe & sucks, sometimes bites, & we react in finality to the darkening page. For certain, this is all a poem could ever be: a wading verse, a toe on the surface of a deep lake painting what willing phrase comes closest. It’s the coy fish here to startle us with inspiration again. Sudden in its half built draft-ness, its humility. It hurts, maybe there’s even blood. Maybe our protagonists have spoiled into ornery, horny ruined antagonists. Hungry breathers piddling around flat waters, we. Maybe poetry is less prancing, more haunting, more hovering over a waterbank, more blurry mirrors & watery portals. Sometimes we float above it like better angels, or beady messengers. Mostly, it’s all ghosts & guttural bottom of the lake sort of junk. You don’t necessarily need it to survive. You don’t even really get it until you’ve been dead, or bloated, chewed up & desperate for a while. Any dry visitor can hold a fishing pole & sit buzzing as a tapping pen. It takes a wader to stun a fish into greedy hunger. So enraptured one forgets a life for the taste of another biting thought.

suz

Category

Poem

6/8/26

chemo waiting room – day 1

I wonder if she’s ever been this afraid before
I want to hold her hand and tell her
that the fear is normal and human

but I am afraid of humiliating her
or perhaps that naming the thing
would crack her will

I want to say
you can trust the Lord and still be angry
you can trust the Lord
and still want to live

instead I ask her to help me with my crossword puzzle
I squeeze all my compassion and shared grief
into drawing her gaze away
from a precipice
that I might be too young to imagine

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Philip Corley

Category

Poem

6/8/26

‘Third Street Stuff’ Stuff

It’s only when I discover Third Street Stuff’s doors locked that I realize I should have visited more.

Too often did I make the excuse of it’s too far or I’m too tired to make the drive

or there’s someplace closer by to give me what I need; maybe next time,

except next time just became no more times and there’s another door closed in my heart.

How many phases of life has this building stood as promise through?

Freshman year of college, when we made it our regular hangout despite the fact

that my car was parked two-and-a-half miles back at the football stadium-

the picture taken of shocked faces after an eighty-seven point Scrabble play.

I’d boasted you’re going to have to do something fancy with the J and the X to catch me!

My opponent dropped JINXED on a Triple Word.

Those are the people I should have stuck around, all that time ago,

instead of a particular non-coffee-drinking crowd I would soon fall into.

Years later, the shop would become the springboard for an easy, casual romance.

She had just finished with classes and wanted a coffee and wanted me to be there, too.

As I took my seat beside her, she offered half her sandwich and thus began the best two years of my life,

maybe more if I had fought a little harder for what I wanted.

Still, to this day, I reflect on that relationship with great fondness.

But there was also another girl who I might have once been friends with

had we not crossed paths at the absolute worst time.

All I know is that Third Street was at one point her favorite place

and I’ve always wondered if there was ever a day we both sat at different tables.

Or would have, if I just dragged myself out of the house.

I think that’s the crux of what hurts about that front door not opening:

the inability to make right things that couldn’t help getting broken.

And though I know there’s a chance this closure won’t be permanent,

I can’t shake the worry that it won’t come back the same

because I didn’t.