Death Of A Sweet Gum
Miracle Man
3/14/2022
Leaves cascading as if indiscriminately lost,
casualties of nature and multiple nights frost.
Once a coat of many colors on our Sweet Gum Tree,
they’ve quickly become just more yard debris.
Leaving exposed, a tree with prickly brown balls,
that will winter as ugly until the last one falls.
This yearly problem no more sticks in my craw,
my light bulb moment was my Stihl chain saw.
Varoom, varoom, varoom.
Helping my father and uncles when I was ten,
felled a tree, on break then ready to go again.
I walked around the corner of the truck
as someone pulled the cord and I got stuck.
Now that chainsaw’s engine didn’t start,
but it didn’t have to, to rip my skin apart.
Right through my jeans, but not too deep,
saw my flesh before it began to seep.
Dyed my t-shirt like a canvas with the body’s ink,
those cells made a mosaic from red to pink.
To my surprise, I was left with no pain,
but anesthetic’s steel lacked the mercy of the bar chain.
Skilled hands drove a cutting needle’s threads
through clotting cascades and capillary beds.
On my right thigh, a scar’s pledge,
for every kind of limb, Stihl has the edge.
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Contest: Any Rhyme Form – An Early Childhood Memory
Sponsor: Line Gauthier
Written: 04.20.18
Reed Four Sound
(a homophobic poem)
By Franklin Price
4/26/2015
Reed four sound
Knot Goode grammar
Here watts hear
On my pinned paige
Eye right it hear
Fore ewe two sea
Cud bee a song
a dough ray me
By sum tyme
Minutes oar ours
Mite knead a weak
Too make sum cents
Of awl thee words
Red wright hear
its awl right
Two sip a bier
Homophones
Knot hard to here
Watt you're ayes reed
Knot herd thee same
Ate words oar mower
Knot watt they seam
Finnished Dunne
My mined Stihl screams
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