Pushcart Prize Poetry Nominations
from Five Fleas Itchy Poetry (Poems published during 2023)
I’m a Mural by Jay Passer
Baby Dalí by Kelly Moyer
Fairy Tales by Gabriel Bates
Sing Gone by Nolcha Fox
49 Cents Change by
Keith Snow
Untitled (first line at least two years) by Patrick Sweeney
creeping sepia
the hint of forbidden sea
in the forest
~Alan Summers
my
beloved dog
alive and young again
on a VHS tape
~John
J. Dunphy
Darkness
within
Darkness without
Darkness all about,
I am
afraid of the dark.
~Shirley Smothers
sundown
a
shot
glass
window
sighs
~Alan Summers
the rain in another life’s beer
~Alan Summers
pregnant
trees
merciless pecking birds
half-eaten lychee
~Bhawana
Upadhyay
offering
a
second opinion
mood ring
~Roberta Beach Jacobson
the snow drifting Pissarro’s painting shadows mostly red
~Alan Summers
Moses recommended
taking the tablets
because
they’d be good for us.
~Tony Dawson
Tony Dawson said to Descartes:
“Thinking outside the box
is the very definition of being alive.”
~Tony Dawson
almost 10 quintillion insects on Earth at all times maintain radio silence
~Alan Summers
splendor
found in lacquered tears
dynasties
~Alfred Booth
now is the allegory of the cell phone
~Patrick Sweeney
day of the
my phone dead
~John J. Dunphy
letting go of fear
I step out of
the plane
~Jennifer Gurney
rabbit hole jammed with Alices
~Patrick Sweeney
Carpet
When we
pull apart from
each other
there is a rip –
we are carpet.
the punctuality of dread
~Patrick Sweeney
my Halloween senryu barebones
~John J. Dunphy
not one complaint from the dragonfly swarm
~Patrick Sweeney
letting go of
those voices in my head
saying I can't
~Jennifer Gurney
solving the coagulating mystery of my grandfather's styptic pencil
~Patrick Sweeney
Tolstoy's War and Peace–
thirteen hundred ninety two
pages of advice
~Jennifer Gurney