Lover, Lover
The nighttime sings our names
Ballads of the figurative Juliet
Radios hiss hearts spilled the shadows hide naked ambition stilled
Neglected emotional hills wafts through valleys of past lives
Karmic backlogs review their closing percentages
Futures flood the floors hold the line between fate and tears
Shadow people alone in the twilight
Illuminated letters, walls woed to sleep
Dreams from the shoreline as phantom vessels waltz on the silver linings
Postures of stable footing, top of the line, kings and queens of value
Thumbs circle the knuckles, bone kisses bone, the familiar taste of home
Haunted hems lines explored in tribal pursuits
Please keep me waiting
The specter of tender frames evaporates
Morning ghosts caress the memory in travel
Neckties versus deadlines
Power brokered, breath that betrays the dream
Folded napkins
Cocktail napkin epitaphs
Check please
For Nette Onclaud's Eight By Eight Poetry Contest
Written: Aug. 2, 2026
Folded in fog of muted white
a drifting veil within our sight.
The willow breathes a muffled myth
to dust the dusk with autumn pith.
It blurs the chalky bone of mounds
and hems the sky in shadowed shrouds.
It steals the wholly shape of sounds,
then leaves the soul in dew-tranced shrills.
Dear Summer,
I remember when you felt like forever
When the days stretched so wide
They could hold every dream I hadn’t grown into yet
You were the ticking of sprinklers at dusk
The chalk dust kingdoms on cracked sidewalks
The way fireflies stitched tiny lanterns
Into the hems of our nights
I remember the warmth that clung to my skin
Long after sunset…
As if you were reluctant to let me go
I remember how we believed
Nothing truly ended
The bike rides and laughter
The barefoot sprints across the lawn
Would loop back again next year
Exactly as we left them
But you changed and so did I
Now your return feels like an old photograph
I keep trying to step into
Familiar and golden
Never quite the same shape
Still I greet you each time
Hoping you’ll bring back
One more echo of who I was
When your light first found me
Truly Yours,
The kid who never stopped believing you’d return
the words were whispered through the wind’s kindness
all over the forest, we could hear the tiny rumblings
the fire witches have arrived, it is their year!
We never knew when or if they would show up
Sometimes they were gone for fifty years
Other times, they would appear in a mere twenty-two.
As a young oak, I had never seen them before today.
I watched the three of them glide through the forest.
We never knew if they were up to goodness or harm.
But they were a sight, something I would never forget
in their colorful dresses, whose hems glowed with bonfire magic.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It fits, barely~
this small metal crown
pressed onto my finger,
a relic of Mother’s hands.
She stitched whole worlds
from scraps and thread,
turned hunger into hems,
poverty into patterns.
The thimble remembers
the push and pull,
the slow accumulation
of seams, of days~
how she mended
what was torn
without complaint,
how she clothed us
in her quiet revolutions.
Now when I wear it,
I feel the ghost
of her determination,
the weight of all
those invisible stitches
holding me together.
you may read the related memoir vignette at: poetrysoup.com/short_stories/thimbles_and_thread_13647
When Heaven folds its violet wings,
And Silence keeps the Door —
When Faith forgets her whispered psalms,
And Hope is heard no more —
There moves — a Breath — between the Dust,
A Pulse the grave denies —
Too small for Science — yet it stirs
The Weary — when I die.
No temple holds my wandering feet,
No creed my garment hems —
I walk where human sorrow sleeps,
And sing in shattered hymns.
For when all else has turned away,
We find — in one another — God.
I passed the elm at eventide,
Its arms were bare, its breath was wide,
And there beneath the twilight sky
I thought I saw a woman roam.
Her gown was thin as woven mist,
A memory the dark had kissed;
No rustle made, no shadow cast—
She moved as moonlight through the grass.
Do ghosts wear gowns like we once wore,
With hems that brush the oaken floor?
Do buttons cling and silks remain
When souls have slipped the cords of life?
Perhaps they wear what dreams devise—
Not stitched by hand, but born of skies.
A shawl of dusk, a veil of rain,
The hush of snow against the pane.
She turned to me but made no sound,
And yet my heart was loosely bound—
By what, I cannot quite define:
A lace of loss, a thread of time.
If ghosts wear clothes, they must be spun
From things undone, from lives begun.
The moon invites romantic hearts
To ride moonbeams as kissing starts
The heavens sewn in gleaming hems
The stars they shine like precious gems
From galaxies light years away
The stars are there, and there to stay
Adorned like queens in diadems
The stars they shine like precious gems
A star was seen, it brightly shone
A king was born, divine his throne
From there came many faithful stems
The stars they shine like precious gems
Throughout the heavens stars disperse
The muse of poets find a verse
Gleaming words in many poems
The stars they shine like precious gems
In Marked Territory 10-28-24 - Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In Marked Territory
Midnight tightly clasps the darkness,
Like a wounded heart,
In between topaz edges of twilight
And pastels of first light.
Jealous of its cosmos
Shoos away the master of the day
Turning the face of the daystar
To other skies
To claim small hours.
Guardian of vanishing infinities
Speaks
Indigo borders
For moonlight
Moonbows
And wishes on the first brave star
Where waves of the galaxy
Break
Over unseen edges of stellar sands.
Lit only by celestial lanterns
Enchanter
Conjures sovereign spells
Declaring jurisdiction over platinum roses
And
Lover’s sighs
That wax then wane under polar stars.
Night rules this welkin magic,
A sorcerer hiding a book of spells,
This realm under the starry arch
The moonrise
The nebulae decorating the firmament,
Where gravity hems in epiphanies.
Carved arches of rainbows competed with the sunbeam clouds.
Stairs from the seen scenes to the unseen secrets sped in shrouds.
Galaxies and constellations like lightning bolts shined and shunned.
Between snow-white clouds, seraphims and cherubims hummed.
I saw the souls of saints around the thrones of the Trinity.
They sang and danced, adorned in robes of divinity.
The hems of the cloaks of the father, the son, and the spirit
Flowed and glowed through the realm, joys implicit and explicit.
Amidst hills, seas, oceans, and valleys, in the velvet green
On the edge of the yard of Eden, Adam and Eve were seen.
The seasons of spring, summer, winter, and autumn looked blended.
With plants, trees, flowers, and fruits, the heavenscape seemed splendid.
The merge of God’s glory and joy of beings is heaven.
Love, peace, kindness, goodness, and fullness there bind everyone.
Crafty Christine has a magical way with a sewing machine
She is also great with crafts, she may be the queen
She puts things together in a fun, fine way.
Recipients of her gifts say “hip hip hooray!”
She can take old denim and make aprons that glow.
With hems of silver, they put on a fine show.
Her quilts are amazing, better than any we’ve seen.
Crafty Christine is the queen, yes, she is the queen!
Her concoctions and designs are legends around here.
We stand back, amazed, said her neighbors dear.
She can take a backyard and turn it into a park fit for a queen.
We are all impressed by our clever, crafty Christine.
If you're reading this, honey
it means the diner is burning,
It's not a typo or a misprint,
but a message:
Witches are wisdom-embedded
women who have seen worse things
than the business end of a newt's behind
I once made a man cry with desire
on a whim by telling him who he was
at twenty-five, I hadn't yet realized
it's really just a trick of language
to be specific
pick the bits of a person, hanging
like snagged teeth on stems
of last night's arugula
reading their cards like tarot on credit
serve the assessment of them
with a side of sugar they'll call it magic,
make you marry if you're good at it—knowing
when to grind the spices is the icing
sin of men or Saigon cinnamon no matter
witches as women, as wisdom get better
in time, in the garden, in the kitchen
slow-cooking rhymes that melt men's masks
over jasmine rice, like loose meat
so the young girls feeding at our hems
can remember the recipe
In tastefully lined up pots in a row,
Multi colored balsams in clusters grow.
A visual treat to adoring eyes,
But never a haunt frequented by bees.
Balsams do not need much care, yet may fade,
If not allowed a little shade.
Flimsy they are of delicate stems,
With light green leaves of serrated hems.
Growing in my neatly laid up yard,
They invariably make me glad.
Gleaming in the first rays of summer sun,
By their simple beauty, my heart they have won.
Unlike the charming red, red rose
Hardly any poet, on them, odes compose
They have no scent, yet as a colorful throng,
In my courtyard, proudly they belong
When the flowers wither, pods appear
In time for self- dissemination, prepare
When fully ripe, the pods explode
And seeds fly as birdies from their nest to explore!
Thus, Nature’s ways are so amazing
Even in plants there's an inherent training
For seeds to leave the comfort of their pods
And find their own space fighting all odds!
Simple days of Summer
convey simple moments:
a humming hummingbird,
dancing dandelion,
a hazy morning, blurred.
Simple days of Summer
whisper of simple times:
sharing a root beer float,
going to the movies,
fishing from a friend's boat.
Simple days of Summer
conjure simple pleasures:
antiquated book stores,
picnics on a bronze beach,
bare feet on polished floors.
Simple days of Summer
tickle simple senses:
sweet homemade lemonade,
slushy, syruped snow cones,
denim shorts with hems frayed.
I love to sail on waves of sky
where breaths of clouds are rushing by,
where tall trees toss their leafy heads
way above the garden beds.
I love to swing with the birds at dawn
when sky cracks open and day is born,
when hems of fur on the robes of night
gently brush the morning light.
I ride on a swing. I swoop and fly.
I kick at falling leaves.
I call to a magpie as she dips by,
and feel the whoosh of the breeze.
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