It's the 2025 Poem-A-Week Challenge! (This is a *poems only* thread.)

[MrMrsMrsMr]

My Teens

Fire Flys in a field,
on their phones

messaging, they Yay,
and disappear

and Yay
and disappear


16/52

 

[_Land]

Wild and Wounded West Virginia

They broke her—
but she never begged.
cracked her ribs with dynamite,
bled her out in boardrooms,
and called it profit.
Progress.
Patriotism.

They took her peaks—
flattened them into plateaus.
Ripped out her roots,
then blamed her
for flood.

Coal in their pockets.
Cancer in our lungs.
Millionaires made
from marrow and mines,
while mamas spoon powdered milk
into open mouths
with no futures promised.

She raised her kids
on prayers and pork fat,
on busted heaters,
on hope taped to the fridge
next to eviction notices
and old report cards.

And when those kids left—
not for glory,
but survival—
she waved with a shaking hand
and a mouth full of dust.

They call it migration.
We call it exile.

They call us poor.
We call it theft.

They call us resilient.
We call it survival with a limp.

The robber barons came
with contracts and clean shoes.
Signing the mountain’s death.
Stole her spine
and sold it by the ton.

Then left.
Left us holding the grief,
the ash,
the silence.

They poisoned the wells—
said boil the water.
They poisoned the jobs—
said work harder.
They poisoned the truth—
said you chose this.

Lies.
Wrapped in policy.
Hand-delivered by politicians
who never been to a gas station
with a locked bathroom
and one working pump.

The church is caved in.
The school roof leaks.
The playground rusts.
The grocery closed.
The post office shut.
The jobs?
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.

But the mountain—
she remembers.

She don’t forget names
or dates
or broken treaties.
She holds that pain
like a rifle under the bed.

Wounded, yes—
but wild.
Still.
Feral with memory.
Fanged with grief.
Clawed with fury.

She is not your charity.
She is not your cheap fuel.
She is not your afterthought.

She is a mother
with nothing left to give—
except revenge.

And when she rises—
because she will rise—
she won’t come gentle.

She’ll come like flood.
Like flame.
Like every name
you forgot to carve
into your checkbook.

You took everything.
Left nothing.

But she’s still here.

Wounded.
And wild.
And watching.



53/52

 

[42BelowsBack]

A plane flies under the moon
The sky is a bed of stars

The moon lies under starlit sheets
Cloud trails in a dark duvet

Two lovers fly undercover
these covers

There is no air between them
Their fear is gone

The plane passes the moon.


N0 5 of a hoped for 52.

 

[MrMrsMrsMr]

No ordinary dust


In a dark house
with male power lines
reaching through the years

My father was a tall dark sky
My moma was a mini dress
with little slits in the sides

In the yard there were
Motorcycles. Big black apehangers
Long multicolored bikes with extended forks

Everyone took off their boots and left them
where my brother and I parked our tricycles
Like outlaw horses nosed into the stoop

17/52

 

[Angeline]

Laura

My doo-wop princess
married jazz and poetry

campfire songs in girl
group harmonies, crashing

chords through three-octaves,
her mezzo-soprano soared

over New York's clattering
cacophony, neon proud or whisper

soft that silken range worn close
to the skin, surely she was

a weaver's lover, born
for the loom's desire*



Quoted end phrase from "Emmie, Eli and the 13th Confession."



Week 27, Poem 1, Total 24

 

[_Land]

"Halos In The Sidewalk
(for those who bloom where they are unwelcome)

We were never meant to be royalty—
but oh, how the sun loved us.
He placed halos on our heads,
and we wore them
like children wear Sunday dresses,
wrinkled but radiant.

We are not weeds.
We are memory,
clinging to cracks in forgotten sidewalks
where lovers once kissed
and elders once wept.
Our roots run beneath your stories—
you paved them,
but we remember.

Yes, they pluck us.
Yes, they curse us.
But we return.
We always return.
devoted.

To the child who gathers us
in a bouquet of belief,
we offer magic.
One breath,
and we scatter our souls
across the wind,
gladly.

They call us common—
but we know better.
We are the ones who come back
when no one else does.
Golden.
Uninvited.
Whole.

Call us fragile—
but watch how we survive
what the roses could not.
We are the bittersweet hymn
beneath your boots.
Soft.
And still singing.

Go on—
pluck us if you must.
But know this:
it takes a dandy lion
to bloom in the cracks
and still roar without sound.

54/52

 

[Angeline]

Big Beautiful Lies

Catastrophe looms like a storm cloud: our umbrellas turned inside out.


Week 27, Poem 2, Total 25

 

[_Land]

Brevity

A single breath, sharpened to pierce where paragraphs drown.

55/52


A descriptor of the two poems above

 

[_Land]

IDENTITY

I am not a pronoun.
I am pulse.

I am

Uncontained by definitions.
Unrestrained by expectation.

I am

Simple,
and Complex.

I am

Not a label.
Not a product of certificate.

I am

Whole beyond your words.
Alive despite your packaging.

I am

Not unnecessary labels.
Not your profiling.

I am

memory and marrow.
Made of choice, not category.

I am

The question you misunderstand.
The voice you try to cut off.

I am

Unwritten by your charts.
Untamed by your checklist.

I am

one who speaks without translation.
form that doesn't fracture.

I am

Not the sum of your assumption.
Not an inconvenience.

I am

Authentic.
Genuine.
Me.

I am not a pronoun.
I am pulse.


56/52

 

[LovelyLadyLicker]

Dawn has Come
Weary Eyes
And like the sun
She's bright but so, so tired

The Lords
'Rather, Babes
See twinkling stars
Precious souls they shall take

Her Breath
Her Body
Used and bloated
Doesn't deserve help; she's too demure, too gaudy

New Horizons
Barren and Broken
They've decided
Women's plight of endless unrest is foretoken.

 

[42BelowsBack]

Death is an Alien mind.

(I have seen) the white blink
of my eyes rolled up.

Felt the air leaving holes
in My existence.

Heard the voice of distant strangers
My body leaving me to bleed out.

Then I heard a stranger
whispering, goodbye me.


No 6 of 52.

 

[_Land]

Life Lessons in Beth’s Kitchen


The first time I saw the words
stamped into her roasting pan
“Always support the bottom”
I laughed.

Beth didn’t.

She just turned,
pork butt in hand,
and raised an eyebrow
like I should already know better.

I didn’t.
But I do now.

Because in that kitchen
I learned a few things:

Don’t grab from the sides.
Don’t lift with weak wrists.
Slide in, steady,
hold from underneath.

Support the bottom.

That pan taught me how to carry dinner.
Beth taught me how to carry her.

Her bottom
sharp in jeans,
soft in the morning,
solid in every sense.

It wasn’t a punchline.
It was the anchor.
The place where tension settles,
where balance begins.

Over years and burners,
I got better.
At bracing.
At holding.
At knowing when she needed two hands
and not one joke.

Beth didn’t ask for much—
just that when the heat turned up,
I’d be there,
hands ready,
grip sure.

Not just for pork.
Not just for show.

But for her.

So yeah
I support the bottom.
Hers.
Always.
Like it’s the most important thing
I’ll ever carry.

Because in Beth’s kitchen,
it was.

And still is.

57/52

 

[Tzara]

Gratitude

I sent Joan roses,
delicate orange-pink blooms
like her skin's light blush,
then turned my thoughts to Susan
and her low moans beneath me

Week 27 : Poem 2 : Total 33

 

[Angeline]

Love Song

Lilac petals fell,
fragrant drifts on late Spring air
fallen to my skin,
silk upon my creamy flesh,
while you shook the branch and smiled.


Week 27, Poem 3, Total 26

 

[Wonderer67]

Twilight in July
Magic
Soft nights
Walking w Miss Conduct

The moon
Somewhere between yellow
And cream
Nestled
Between two white pines

Lightning bugs
Rising up in waves
Blinking
Looking for mates

I held my own closer

18/52

https://imgur.com/a/OCL5Y25

 

[Wonderer67]

Gary’s Alive Day

I was nervous as fuck for it
Demons lurking at the idea
Dusty Iraqi cities and streets
Kicked in the back of my head

Wild street dogs, maws open wide
Licking their chops for a piece of my psyche
At the edges of my memory

…Western Bagdad…
…Taji…
…Tal Afar…

Route Cardinals and Route Huskies…
Routes Alaska and Iowa…
Roads that were distant, yet right there in the windshield

Like a person you half recognize
And not sure if you should wave or say “hi”

My war was mostly in my rearview
Yet traces of it remained in my bloodstream

Twenty fuckin years!

And some of the color of our time there
Had been blanched and tempered

Two trips to the sandbox was enough for me
Gary went on to a third deployment
In the ‘Stan this time
Where he was nearly killed

And then the day arrived..

I was oddly calm
It wasn’t about me
Or my feelings

I saw Gary
At his Alive Day celebration
A surprise that his wife had set up
I hugged him and I started crying
Honestly, I was just happy to see that he was alive
I told him I was just glad he was on the planet

He called me a pussy
Classic Gary…

I had probably overthought it
It seemed like not a day had passed
Maybe time hadn’t done a damn thing
He was exactly the same
Had I really changed?
Or maybe neither of us
And/or both of us had changed

It didn’t matter
We laughed
Joked
Told stories for the millionth time

Richards throwing track at the intersection
Of cardinals and Irish - the worst possible place
MacBrode accidentally flying his RC airplane into Baghdad international airspace, closing it
The Christmas morning attack with Johnson in his whitey tighties and flip flops shooting everywhere

We reconnected
Telling funny stories

It felt like breathing again

19/52

After few days later I texted Gary
“it was honestly an honor to be there celebrating your alive day.”

He said, more seriously this time:
“Thank you brother. Just so you know, I really appreciate your friendship.”

 

[_Land]

Grandpa's Alzheimer's

The light left slow,
peeling itself from the corners of his thoughts
like paint curling in summer heat.

His name drifted off one syllable at a time.
Cartoni melted in his mouth
like sugar left in the rain.
Italy became a noise without shape.
Silver mines turned to shadows.

He looked through people
as if we were fog.
He folded napkins
and thought they were train schedules.
Time bent around him.
Clocks no longer mattered.

But one word clung.

Grandpa.

Spoken not from memory
but from love's deepest pocket.
A title given by a child
who climbed into his lap
and rewrote his name in crayon.

He said it like it meant everything.
Said it when soup went cold in his hands.
Said it when the nurse called him James
and he didn’t answer.
But when I said,
"Hi Grandpa,"
his eyes cleared,
just for a moment,
like smoke pulling back from flame.

He reached for my face
as if it were sunrise.
Not because he knew the story
but because the feeling remained.
He was not a man lost.
He was a man holding one truth
tighter than his own reflection.

He wore Grandpa
like the last coat that fit.
Soft at the shoulders,
familiar at the seams.
It was the word that built a home
inside a collapsing house.

Even as the roof caved,
he stood under that name,
dry
warm
found.


58/52

 

[MrMrsMrsMr]

XX,XX,Syrupy,Warm,Breathing,Heavy,Wet,Red,Lip,Swirls,Tongues,Circle,Love,


18/52

 

[Tzara]

On Misreading the Inscription
in My Copy of a Professor's Book

After the graduation ceremony,
we sat on folding chairs
talking about poetry and writing,

about how much I enjoyed
his classes, how he appreciated
my work as his student.

As we talked, he wrote in blue ink
on the front free endpaper
in his cramped, angular script

and I thanked him when he finished.
We shook hands and I went home.
Later, I opened and read

after some preliminary comments,
Here's to finding our way
girl by girl. Startled,

I wondered how he knew about my crush
on Ann, who wrote memoir,
or how I longed to curl Frida

(sad stories about werewolves)
under my protective but probing
arms. Then I looked again

and the critical phrase resolved
into the wholly guiltless Here's to finding
our way line by line.

Chastened, I put the book
back in its proper place, shelved
neatly between Passion and Prosody.

Week 28 : Poem 1 : Total 34

 

[goddessofglee]

**The Truth**

Quiet forces move—
between creation and loss,
reshaping all things.

№16 of 52

 

[DeMont]

Welcome to 2025, Poets, and Happy New Year. This year your challenge is to write a poem each week of the year. Let me cover the details in a brief Q&A!

Can I write a sonnet? A villanelle? Free verse? An erotic prose poem? Etc, etc, etc.
Write anything in any style that *you* define as poetry. The only rules you must follow are the same as for every thread on this forum and the Poet's Hangout, the official forum guidelines.

What if I want to write 52 haiku or American Sentences or (heaven help you) sestinas?
Write what works for you. One of the benefits of this sort of challenge is that you end up with 52 (or more, but more on that in a bit) poems, enough for a poetry chapbook. So if, for example, you'd been considering writing a chapbook of sonnets, this challenge could provide a way to do that. And if you don't have a plan and just want to write some poetry each week well that's fine, too.

What if I miss a week or two? What if I'll be busy in March and can't write poems then? Do I have to drop out?
Just do your best. If you miss a week or more no one is going to judge you. In fact no one but you will be keeping count of when and how often you write. Obviously the more poetry you write, the better for you. But you're in charge of that and we all recognize that life gets in the way of our best laid plans at times.

Is it ok to write more than one poem per week?
Of course! Write as many poems as you want.

I have comments, questions, observations. I'd like to say I like a specific poem or make a suggestion. Can I do that in this thread?
This will be a poems only thread. Please put your comments, etc in the discussion thread here. If you forget and drop a comment in this thread it'll be moved to the discussion thread.

I have a good idea for a challenge. Can I still post it this year?
Absolutely! Everyone is always welcome to post prompts on this forum or post on any of the ongoing challenge threads. Even time-sensitive threads (like last year's challenges, for example) are open to anyone who wants to write in them. If you're inspired, write!

Suspicion

Where are you my love
When asleep and inside your head
Are you still here with me
Or lying in another's bed?

Does my touch still excite
Do my kisses still entice
Or does the need I still feel
Leave you as cold as ice?

When we go out dancing
Bodies swaying in our heat
Or are your eyes closed
Imagining grinding to his beat?

Or is there something more?
Something I am missing?
Is it a delicious young woman
That you'd rather be kissing?

The agony of not knowing
Is tearing at my very soul
I wish you'd tell me my darling
Is our love still whole?

 

[Angeline]

Schoodic Memory

I see you in dreams
as if you had never left
Maine's bare, rocky coast--
that cabin near the dockside
where we loved by the sea wind.


Week 28, Poem 1, Total 27

 

[MrMrsMrsMr]

Sweet Star of Bråvalla
In the Night’s Sky.

Why have you embossed
Himinn’s starry shield?

Your fiery trail high above
streaming hair -a comet’s
tail in Himinn’s host, tell
me lost daughter,

Why have you gone to
the mighty among the
stars that pierce the
blackened sky?

Why do Oden’s once
made hale again sons
toast you in his hall of
hosts?

Why did the Valkyries
swoop down to prise
your hand away from
your shield and spear?

Now shield-maiden your
flesh and bones are marrow
for the meadow flowers on
the mythical field of Bråvalla.



19/52

 

[Kat90xx]

The once was an old lass called Joan
Who was a brittle old horny crone
She’d lay on her back
Displaying her crack
As it hurt her hips to bone prone

 

[Angeline]

Tea and Sympathy

I love Elle. She's my sister
from a different mom and Lord
we save each other daily.

Our generation apart is nothing
when we talk music, men, food.
Laughter bubbles and flows

in the digital space we've built
founded in poetry and safe
from this world that spins

incomprehensibly around us.
So when I tell her I've fallen
down a wackadoo rabbit hole

where a woman recommends
washing chicken in a dishwasher
Elle chokes on her laugh and says

Why she's crazy as a soup sandwich!

Thank heaven for the World Wide Web
that gifts me both dishwasher chicken
and a sister who always understands.




Week 28, Poem 2, Total 28