prompts: sugarcoat fingerprint primrose retrograde saga dormant hypothetical implores plumes resolve normalize shame

November 4, 2021 to November 18, 2021

from the new moon to the full moon in Scorpio

sugarcoat
The sugarcoat fairy has a white wand that sprays a sweet powder onto desserts, glass rims, and hard truths.
Often followed by the elusive tooth fairy who sneaks in to collect your teeth and the occasional sock.


fingerprint

fingerprint
o your voice
unlocks
cliche
ridges, whorls
veins, shape
disturbs the air
in a lover’s mouth
vowels
of
admission
quicken, thicken
the formant
folds deep
in throat
open and close
tremerous
sympathetic
bones and body
lash and tongue




How fast you move, swift Mercury
how slowly your myth wanes
Appearing to regress backward
as you pass in retrograde

Venus relaxes on cowslip wine
made from the primrose
of youth, when a paused
message of love was new


saga
“Sorry about that! It’s a monthly saga. She sought help but her insurance might as well be a coupon for 10% off Midol.
Her support group changed locations without telling her and, oh no.., I can’t find my wallet—“

“GO!” The clerk said, standing in the rubble. “LEAVE!”


dormant

“The term ghosting is an insult to ghosts.”

Cere cut deep into the burning bush, removing dead weight from the dormant plant to stimulate growth in the spring.

“All you can do is treat yourself better than that—care well for yourself—and love comes back. New love.”


hypothetical implores

It hurts. The expectation.
But it was a lipless hypothetical notion.
A narrative unspoken neither guides nor implores action to reach that forever ending, where pride belongs to everyone.


plumes photo

plumes resolve
plumes of lament
$2k in car repairs
filigreed wreathy elegy
time = money + interest
shearing scytheless stylist
resolve mends or ends
in determination

thoughts
like a fresh
haircut


normalize

“Not everything has to be normalized. You don’t comb the beach looking for the least exceptional rock.” I looked at Ash. “Sorry, the graveyard, seeking unremarkable stones.”

Something like a smile broke through Ash’s stolid face. “Or the bones of sane people.”


shame

I’m a firestarter
A ram bored with shame
Blood cut off from tight reins
Cold hand fumbles matchstick

A shrug-off warms up
this sympathy dance
Great romance cues
the strings, notes
like tears drop
Douse a flame

Relax the grip
gentled baton

prompts: trust signifies cafe innocence intimacy accidentalist hurt foreshadow sleepwalk

October 20, 2021 to November 1, 2021

from the full moon to the new moon in Libra / Scorpio


trust

Back to the wilder
from collapse
under stacks
of undecayed
inorganic
matter—
It’s all temporary

Underground digs
in sentiment trapped
Prone to lucid dreaming’s
involuntary maw
Steps into the yawn
of your own pitfall

Take to the trees
like Tarzan—climb
your agile mind—
swing from trust-
worthy vines


signifies

In his ghast and livid beam, no colors absorb; absence signifies his subject in virous torrents of rayed devastation.
I am spared—my eyes cauterized at first sight. Mere ash beside a vacuum, patient for the Spring. Cremains in the kindness of a friend.


cafe
I’m a tourist in their cafe
where they talk over a good song;
Collectors of the medium/ who trade
the pain of kids who don’t belong.

It bounces off the reclaimed beams—
factoids, brag, gimcrackery;
lathers popularity
without a sole
analogy/ of us

on the island of loneliness


innocence

Innocence is a gift—mingled in commitment—of passage.

It has been slain on the altar of infant helplessness sulked in vengeance.

It has been saved by the certainty of power relinquished in permanence.

One day you won’t give your heart to bargainers.


intimacy

At the corners of their bed sate epic tales of wind, fire, earth, and sky loving the anthropomorphized form of their senses, conjured from the aromatic pyre; a tinder nest, intimacy the tender.

Not even the fires of hell refined worked so well to warm the dead.



She was an ‪accidentalist in one great big song about obedience.
More deistic than contrarian, because those small-town panderers just couldn’t be the gatekeepers of divinity.
They sounded more like creations of comedy.


hurt

“You’re being emotional and kinda paranoid,” Maena said. “Read the situation like a book.”

“Like look at a few words, jump to conclusions, and cry into my pillow?” Cere asked.

Maena smiled. “No, we don’t read books like the words are going to ‪hurt us.”


foreshadow
In the afterglow
of a gamma-ray
burst/ in her hard
bright light

His silhouette whistles—
harsh foreshadow,
blocking the lumen;
inkling black hole,

a cold hero’s trope


sleepwalk

I sleepwalk & talk
expose the bare truth
that fear & pain
hang from the pall
that covers the life of day

Mantle worn by soothsayer
who blankets infantile babe

There, in low waves
while the mind hides
memories, ring words
of the dissembler:
vestments
unpicked to rags

©2021 LAFogle / Lesley Ann Fogle

prompts: autumn winds dandelion poem blackbird tangling fireflies river funambulo ebb stranger hesitate

October 6, 2021 to October 19, 2021

from the new moon to the full moon in Libra


autumn, winds, dandelion, poem
‪Autumn winds
compose fire-pit scents
under dandelion parachutes
—echo bloom;
crackles underfoot

As trees discard
their rupturous leaves;
cells grown in between
life-giving stages

Deep discoverable mystery
unlike a poem’s
slow
arrival
on high-speed internet


blackbird
At noon, hiding her shortest shadow in alignment with the bridge, Maena followed between the dark images of the blackbirds bouncing across the water, ignoring the ripping vortex of shattering muck and slosh as the surfacing malevolent spirit lunged to tow all shadows underwater, leaving its victims soulless and forever staring at their own reflection.


tangling
In same footsteps/
wind & sun ‪tangling for our skin/
the weathered abrasion of a rock
we stop to pick up/ real weight/
shapes of polished angles
tumble to dents clove
from the whole/

Our fingers bump
across the crust
of our proud
mantle


fireflies
My love’s eyes strike like a floodlight
When he blinks, ‪fireflies disappear
Every week, a brave new season
I’m just here, prepared—
I got boots, flip-flops, cloak,
sneakers, shades, change of clothes
Umbrellas are useless in storms, climactic
And the rain just feels good.


river
Our cup spilled
unspeakable
divine fem
granules
whole flawed alien
Entire love
I could never be
but in that night of time
scythes
petalled revolution
bloomed execution
o the so-called weak
gentle tears
better part o u
I will singe us together
our cups will form a river


funambulo, ebb
Spored tears, at lashes tip—
‪funambulo cries
from ‪ebb of rope,
subsides;
Moist moss untwists
quiet, fast arias
—balloons—
post-wildfire.

May the fire-lighters,
wisdom pre-dominant,
palettes & moss,
plan the burning.


stranger, hesitate
Our guards and guardians
have never acted stranger:
they hesitate, nip
at phantom peripheral itches.
Animal mom, animal dad,
do bugs live in your skin?

©2021 LAFogle / Lesley Ann Fogle

prompts: venture contemporaneous carved priors brash favorable alarm history fret rivulet aim crepuscular stutters shadows cemetery

September 20, 2021 to October 3, 2021

from the full moon to the new moon in Virgo / Libra


venture
It was a foggy night. The smug was heavy in the air. Cere preferred the fog to the gas. If she had to venture a guess, she’d say this circle of hell was a repeating popularity pageant with the grand prize being the flashiest coffin lined with gold velvet cash-stuffed bedding and large enough to store the winner’s favorite toys and suckling gizmos. Cere had her money on Headuptheassicus, which was the nickname she gave Becky Green, the meanest and most popular demon at Hellmont High.


contemporaneous
As the sunlight shortens in autumn,
the moon’s contemporaneous rise
extends the bright moonlight
for several nights;
a hard turn through the zodiac,
the Earth responds softly
while the summer crops
are harvested in light


carved
These words, little doses
of dopamine, spill
onto the page encoding
feelings that range
beyond identification,
carved and contained
in the ink of description;
in the play of depiction.


priors
Do we wring life from its spine—every drop?
Jump over the haters or stop
I see a vault line:
faults and blame, bias and shame;
priors reenacted,
posturing exacted
in the primal part
of the brain.

How long goes
the era of suggestion?
Get ready to jump


brash
Her art made you think; it wasn’t explosively brash or cutting but just the tip of the tine limned through your mind exposing heavy artifacts you’d filed away, postponed as bigger problems you were helpless to solve. But obstructed by the feign of ignorance as doing nothing tips the balance of conscience toward inhumanity.


favorable, alarm
Above the clouds at our feet
If Love were a Titan, were
to step up on the highest
mountain, emerge
from the foam
neath the favorable
mythic moon;
silence
the alarm
of humors
balancing biles of thinner air
We are the very atmosphere
How easily these bodies
breathe as it carries us home


history
It was the biggest “FU” ever recorded in the annals of history. Its echoes shrank the Great Barrier Reef down to a chew-sized crouton. The sheer profundity reduced black hole theories to petty overthinking.


fret
Maena and I called him Gambusi because he looked like a worn one we’d found at a yard sale. The top fold of his rutted brow seesawed with each eye—the near-sighted one for glaring up close and the other for glaring at a distance—like a loose fret indented when a finger slides over it so that a higher harmonic rang with his every word, like the echo of a knife being sharpened, like the hint of screech when that same finger hovers close to a flame. Gambusi was wound tight—warped neck, too; his chin evolved back and down, locked, with no movement in that direction, just the side-to-side head shakes of “no.”


rivulet
Blue Kill rivulet,
I follow you to the fork
on the banks where
my baby walked before

The water picks up speed
just before the tributary,
rejoins the mighty
between this widening shore


aim
Said a man with his best aim:

“I’ll throw my hat in the land of milk and honey”

When the material veil had been lifted
his mind ran like fire ants


crepuscular
The sun retires and shadows lighten,
the wistful glow of our golden hour fades
Specks of light turn on like fireflies
while the deer, fox, and bat play
in the crepuscular twilight;
their cool blue silhouettes
evanesce from human sight


stutters
It lands casual
gradual macabre concern
then a want to share
pain all day
all day
‪Stutters
of ingrained emotion
till you confide your
deepest stains

Then it neatly packs
both stories
and flies away
flies away


shadows
“While others accept impermanence, we do not conclude such bleak ways of thinking. Our bleakness is in the ode to death but not in its permanence.” A dark shape fell across Maena’s face adding punctuation in that we did not dwell on shadows as harbingers of the sun’s end.


cemetery
If you, Death, were
at my cemetery,
I’d let the friction
of your inevitability
set fire to our effigies
as scapegoats for envy 

While the devil
repossesses our
earthly talents
that shake off
in the final dance.

©2021 LAFogle / Lesley Ann Fogle

prompts: lock mock sock war store shore score door lore wake gores glib alight choir

September 6, 2021 to September 19, 2021

from the new moon to the full moon in Virgo


locks
My hair smells faintly of you living in the strands
The memory locks on briefly,
tightens in a playful pull for your reaction


mock
The wolf, starved, eyed the food left at the door of civilization. A steel bowl garnered with rules.

The mockingbird, its acute trills a duality unheard by the wolf, laughed and flew away.


sock
“Try at least three times, really try and without pride, to talk to your friend and try to mend things.”
Grandma’s fingers moved deftly to the clicks of the knitting needles.
She paused to hold the big red sock up to the light.
“Darn it. After that, you might cut ties but don’t carry resentment.
Poison in your well is just as draining as holding on to trouble that can’t be solved.”


war
Strangers now but wearier, warier specie raised by sponges fashioned into mothers; wolves who left the pack in search of mate finding some single cell finale of fate; it was a self-exiled finality unlike the busy sorting aftermath through war or disease


store
a shortage of mason jars lids during the pandemic
a well-built corner store on every block
cherries, apple butter, cheese, and greens
lidded, rezoned into brightly packaged
sugar and fat, three for a dollar
leftover cottonseed once dumped in the river


shore
One foot on the shore side of Scylla
A boat of chum, dog toys, and catnip
some chocolate for the lady and the palest hyacinth
matches and a thimbleful of gasoline


score
The score was 3 to 4:
quarter notes bending into position,
nodding to the stretch
of wholes ready at the relay.
Down the linear track in wait,
a chorus of eighths eager to pace,
excite, divide, and propagate
into a feverish, rapturous finish


door
This broken heart opens like a ‪door
Death metaphor, transform

Ashes on the floor and a wreath
of nosegays and sycamore leaves

Through the door to deity
Entrance or exit, war or peace


door
Mr. Wentithird turned, spotted Ms. Theid, smiled, walked toward her, caught sight of her entourage, paled, checked his watch, then eyed the door to the stairwell. For a moment nothing moved but eyebrows: Mrs. Crane’s raised, Miss Applebomb’s left brow arched, and Ms. Theid’s bunched at the browline.


wake
She listened though I’d said nothing worth saying. Even when my words in wake of sleep fell easy,
she never asked me to explain; said the stringing sound of poesy is the only worthwhile philosophy,
so I stayed. As I was never made her student nor patient, I remain.


lore
Grief takes the very mystery of things and mines the awe; leaves you with a ball of unsorted confusion.

It doesn’t bounce or return—there is no further lore; a hard dull carbon thud.


gores
The art, history, and monuments of battle
never quite depict the blood shed
Rivers of ephemeral red
Infernal tributaries of devastated
communities

The noun ‘champion’ gores the verb
from the the peaceful heart of [hu]man


glib
I missed the soft side; he who called looking for lifelines aglitter, to talk in poesy meandering the marveling day: a language-loving philosopher.

I waited for him at the Green Mill, ill-prepared for the glib aloof lounge singer who sang of his own beauty. It was the wrong night for this mood.


alight
The sky, black and blue, through milky haze;
Stars alight on strings of night and candle flames.
Our bodies tucked in beds of softest grass—
light years from the past—
in the spiral of Orion’s arms.


choir
A choir of highs and lows
with all notes stacked
and tween, moves
in untold ratio
with everything
living

We are resonated fools
in a sea of waves
enduring, brief ballads
fossilizing in the deep

©2021 LAFogle / Lesley Ann Fogle

prompts: clock shocks dock rock jock

August 30, 2021 to September 5, 2021


shocks
His words and deeded shocks, the paradox,
send reckless current rippling through my brain;
firing patterns change to shield-like shapes
sealing intel from his mission of pain.
He’ll write of your imagined devastation
anyway


dock
On the dock of Bear Lake, Michigan, my weightless stick legs bobbing in the teal opaque water; I sat watching my father, almost young again, fish from a pontoon with his best remaining friend.


remant
Ursula’s kingdom was a glittery tree,
a remnant of the Aracariaeae
Too prickly to climb but lovely to see
it’s refusal to be extinct.


rock
The bones stood tall but water is water to rock
Cracks where stacks of slab lay with land
One cosmic shift in the whole honorarium,
the very idea, could buckle and fall. A lean-to
Devotees return to the land
The serotonin from this soil
the very reason to build here


Jock
Jock Camon grew from the bloody fists of Vales in its dirt sun-burned streets where trees once wailed under the axes of men with immediate need for wood. A doorway, stiles and rails of pink chipped paint unfitted in the frame; a plywood panel where a window had been.