05-02-2023, 08:03 AM
Before I am forced to pick some favorites, I have to say that the quality of everyone's poems produced day after day was nothing short of phenomenal. 
Here are a few that represent!
wjames
When a lemon drops
in your palm, and there is no sugar
to meringue, or steak to marinate,
and you have only swallowed saliva
since the full moon lost a quarter
in a bet with the wind
over the weight of the harvest,
guzzle the juice and ration the skin.
Tiger
Preparing a Holiday Meal
I'd had half a bottle of Shiraz
before anyone arrived.
Now I'm tearing up
chopping the fucking onions
and remembering aunt June
once telling me
that a dull knife
is much more dangerous
than a sharp one.
Not if you're being chased
by an 80's horror flick psycho,
I used to think.
I won't go into detail
about my gored thumb,
or auntie June's strange gloating,
but everyone raved about dinner
and when Jaded June let a fart slip at the table,
all the masks came off.
TqB
A cloud of cow-pen daisies
rise in a wave,
a few early blooms,
yellow tipping the flocking green
surrounding a rusted iron kettle
filled with a debris of rock and wood -
April rises to its peak
before summer bears down
and the sun conquers all.
Mark
Route 9 from Harper’s Ferry
On an April eve like this
the road is made for driving,
when a Shenandoah moon
shines low on the horizon.
A “welcome home” aroma
greets me at a country fair;
funnel cakes, cotton candy,
honeysuckle sweetened air.
While crickets chirp and chitter
on discordant singing saws,
old bull frogs belch and bellow
deep mud puddle mating calls.
Threads of silky mist are spun
like fine webs upon the fields;
the spindly, silent spider
lightning crawls across the clouds.
On a country road like this
evening's made for driving,
as flowers fill the distance
between leaving and arriving.
Rivernotch
Some kids I played with, when they hid,
were never found again.
Our chairs would always disappear
until there were only two of us
fighting for one seat.
When we would run out of food to eat,
some would die of hunger
while others, they would choose instead
to choke on marbles.
The grown-ups always forbid
tag and all its relatives
in case one of us tripped.
Those who refused to jump rope
would later hang by one.
Here are a few that represent!
wjames
When a lemon drops
in your palm, and there is no sugar
to meringue, or steak to marinate,
and you have only swallowed saliva
since the full moon lost a quarter
in a bet with the wind
over the weight of the harvest,
guzzle the juice and ration the skin.
Tiger
Preparing a Holiday Meal
I'd had half a bottle of Shiraz
before anyone arrived.
Now I'm tearing up
chopping the fucking onions
and remembering aunt June
once telling me
that a dull knife
is much more dangerous
than a sharp one.
Not if you're being chased
by an 80's horror flick psycho,
I used to think.
I won't go into detail
about my gored thumb,
or auntie June's strange gloating,
but everyone raved about dinner
and when Jaded June let a fart slip at the table,
all the masks came off.
TqB
A cloud of cow-pen daisies
rise in a wave,
a few early blooms,
yellow tipping the flocking green
surrounding a rusted iron kettle
filled with a debris of rock and wood -
April rises to its peak
before summer bears down
and the sun conquers all.
Mark
Route 9 from Harper’s Ferry
On an April eve like this
the road is made for driving,
when a Shenandoah moon
shines low on the horizon.
A “welcome home” aroma
greets me at a country fair;
funnel cakes, cotton candy,
honeysuckle sweetened air.
While crickets chirp and chitter
on discordant singing saws,
old bull frogs belch and bellow
deep mud puddle mating calls.
Threads of silky mist are spun
like fine webs upon the fields;
the spindly, silent spider
lightning crawls across the clouds.
On a country road like this
evening's made for driving,
as flowers fill the distance
between leaving and arriving.
Rivernotch
Some kids I played with, when they hid,
were never found again.
Our chairs would always disappear
until there were only two of us
fighting for one seat.
When we would run out of food to eat,
some would die of hunger
while others, they would choose instead
to choke on marbles.
The grown-ups always forbid
tag and all its relatives
in case one of us tripped.
Those who refused to jump rope
would later hang by one.