I get the sense of mixing flavor categories to produce something more than the sum of its parts, but if there's a real product here, I'm not sure what that is. I've never heard of combining lemon with honeysuckle, though if the point is just generically tempering sourness with sweetness, then fair enough. Though the ending line suggests this won't actually work, and by then I'm lost as to what it all means. i started to lose the sense of that about halfway through the third stanza.

Structurally, the only possible hiccup is whether "cruelties" is taken as two syllables or three.

Another one that makes it seem like the breaks in form were deliberate to make a point. The first two lines have the same rhythm and syllable count, then the last one plows through all that with the "bitters" serving as a contrast to the prior citrus imagery as well as justifying the breakage of form. I like wordplay with "sourly" and "zesty," plus the pun title, but the "citrus" on the second line may be too on the nose.

I did see most of Adventure Time but didn't watch it regularly, so if there are any references beyond Lemon Grab's catchphrase or the mention of adventure in general, I probably missed it.

This has kind of the rhythm and feel of a slam poem, and the irregular rhyme patterns seem to fit that as well. It felt at first like I couldn't figure out a pattern to it at all, but the slam poem aesthetic plus the explicit declaration that it's in unacceptable condition lead me to believe that's the point.

There's two parts to poetry, the message and the skill of construction, and free verse almost always lacks the latter, which is what makes it have a high barrier to being impressive, but this is only meant to be a bit of silly fun, and it does that well enough.

I was mostly lost. Initially, this reminded me of another write-off entry, but I can't put my finger on which one. The narrator seems to be looking through a place where people have been petrified, but instead of speaking to the world in general, it fixates on one person, with us later finding out... it's the protagonist himself? And all the statues are him at different points in his life? It also seems to be at points both ahead and behind him at times, and I can't figure out how both past and future him would be turned to stone. I just don't know what's going on. The ending makes me think it's one of those situations where someone is desperately trying to change the one minute event in a timeline that will fix it all, but I don't have any clues as to what the larger situation is. Nicely evocative and atmospheric, but it mostly went over my head.

I don't know what AMTO is, so some of this may go over my head. I kind of have the same issue with this story as the first one I read. It quickly becomes clear what the conflict and stakes are, then not much else happens for the rest of the story. There's an effect that sometimes happens in stories as well where every conflict that comes up is immediately and easily fixed, which just conditions the reader to expect that there will be no real obstacles to success. Every objection the father comes up with is put down right away by an explanation from the mother or son, and the dad accepts each one in turn. And while the ending finds a solution that would seem to be acceptable to all involved, it's also anticlimactic, so it kind of fizzles. The one thing that does get slowly developed throughout is the context of what's happening with this war, but it's still pretty vague. The strong point is the logical thread, which makes it all stick together as a believable situation.

The writing's good, but I'm only vaguely aware of what's going on. A power struggle, something akin to mafia, if not that precisely. The characterization is fine, but I'm predisposed not to like mafioso stuff, so I don't know how helpful I can be. The father is characterized well, but the narrator isn't much, so it's tough to develop a rooting interest. The other issue I had is that barely into the story, I know what the conflict and the stakes are, and the rest of it doesn't develop that anymore. Hold something in reserve to dole out through the story so there's a continuous plot arc.

Not a form I can immediately name, but I think I've seen before. I like the interlaced and looped rhyme scheme, and the meter all works. Now this one I do get. A nice story of personifying the fog and making her a mischievous character.

Ah, a villanelle, one of my favorite forms. Line 14 comes up a syllable short (though a meter isn't required for this form). As to what happens in it, I'm completely lost. I couldn't decipher one bit of it. It seems like the speaker is outside observing nature, but a couple of the lines make it sound like he's inside, but a white-walled room with a sink and a mud floor? I don't know what that would be. Given the prompt, I guess it literally means the person is in a foggy place that eventually clears out? I don't get a message from it, though.

The rhythms and stresses are forced in places. I like the use of female rhyme, but the first time you do it, it feel like that extra syllable needs to go on the next line, since you'd always been starting them with unstressed ones.

As to the story, it's cute. Some potion students going to a lot of trouble only to have their efforts in vain, and some of the steps, like the underwear, are downright silly. I do wish I had a picture of how the failure manifests. Does the potion just fizzle and do nothing, does it have the wrong effect, does it explode, etc.?

I'm not sure I get the meaning of this. The speaker wanders but always finds himself back home, yet resolves to leave, yet it seems like he's already been doing that. So is this saying he's doomed but unaware, or is he saying he's really, truly going to leave this time? The rhymes and rhythms all work well.

A few typos, and it lapses into past tense once or twice, but other than that, it's sound. This is a really cute and goofy story, but what else would I expect from this author? There's just enough opportunity to characterize everyone, and this has more than just a few similarities with Flowers for Algernon, if that was a possible source of inspiration. I had a lot of fun with this.

I'm not sure whether this is serious about squirrels banding together to attack humans or tongue-in-cheek about how they often fry themselves on electrical lines. Either way, the rhyme and meter are constructed very well, the only minor thing being that "squirrel" can be heard as either one or two syllables. Might one of these squirrels possibly be a sorceress? :-)

Hm, it does what the title says it'll do, and it's interesting to see the follow-through on each. Though some sound derogatory while others sound complimentary, so I can't tell what tone it's taking. Or if it's trying to do both, it might need a tweak to make that explicitly clear. Cool idea as a concept piece.

You've got the right syllable counts, but it's harder to tell since it doesn't maintain a meter. I hope you weren't trying for a meter, because if so, it's forced in beyond recognition. Rhymes are a bit loose in places.

This reminds me a bit of the old Simpsons episode where Bart joins up with a revival preacher, who tries to get Bart to behave, and Bart says he can always just do that right before he dies. The preacher thoughtfully says the deathbed confession is a pretty good angle.

I like the earnestness here. There's a nice plaintive quality.

And I guess the rules changed so that you can use your own picture if it's the only possibility?

Sorry, I completely forgot there was an original round going and I never voted. At least I can still leave a comment.

I like the idea here. A few minor editing issues. It's a bit rushed, and it feels like it skips two important steps. First, this astronaut learning to communicate with the natives. It just happens instantaneously, and possibly the nanomachines can essentially instantly learn his language and translate, but they why'd it take so long for her to teach them how to write it? And why are they so sympathetic to help her carve her message when it never occurred to them to do it on their own behalf? My first guess is that this is the entirety of their civilization, so there's nobody to warn, but they already acknowledged the risk to other races, so why not try to warn them as well? And second, that this is such a personal message. I had mixed feelings about that. I do understand her desire to write it, but she didn't expect her daughter would be the one coming to search for her, so it'd be indirect. I also assume they have FTL available or she was never going to see her daughter again anyway (and would have ample time to write the message—for that matter, won't she have to keep maintaining it so it doesn't erode away before they see it?). Good use of the prompt and handling of the mood.

Since the last two lines of the second stanza rhyme, that has me looking for a rhyme scheme, but there doesn't seem to be an intent for one. The rhythm works fine.

As to what is happening... I have no idea. There are plays on candy names, some of which I get and some of which I don't, but the overall effect is that there's a hidden joke that's going completely over my head. I really don't know what to make of this.

So... I like the mood of this, and the language use was good. But I'm lost on several fronts. One, only the longer stanzas have a rhyme scheme, and only in that they end with two couplets. I'm no scholar of poetic forms, so I wouldn't know if this is a traditional one, but it seems closer to free verse, or at least close to blank verse, as the lines are all iambic tetrameter. I spent so much time looking to see what rhyme scheme there might be that I got distracted from the actual poetry. Like the previous one I read, the meter has one hiccup that relies on a word, "fire," that can be heard as two different syllable counts. I think it's more common to use it as one syllable, but it has to be two to fit the meter. Excusable enough, but you play it both ways: the second time you use the word, it has to be one syllable to fit the meter. Well, plus "wilderness" is kind of wedged into the meter, as you normally wouldn't stress the final syllable of it when speaking.

As to meaning... I get that the speaker finds a burned-out house in the woods and muses on how it fits with its environs. That part was fine. But the ending seemed to be making a point out of that, yet what it was saying went over my head.

Nicely done in structure. The only hiccup I had was that I normally hear "peculiar" as 4 syllables, where it needs 3 to fit the meter. Other than that, the rhymes, meter, and repetition all work great, and that's a tougher stress pattern to write in. I'm a little less clear on the meaning. The speaker definitely feels like his dedication to his work is less than that of the termites, though I don't know whether it's strictly a work ethic thing or if he finds their constructions artistically pleasing as well, more so than his own work.

I like the idea of guilty gorging on Halloween candy after the day, and most of the poem spoke to that fine, but the "no longer keen" felt wedged in. I didn't get what that line was saying. Rhymes all work fine, but there's no meter, if one was intended. Cute enough for a quick read.

Given the title, I assume that names the poetical form. While I've heard of it, i don't know its rules. The rhythm is steady, and amphibrachs aren't the easiest to use. Ah, and the rhymes repeat, so only three for a poem of this length. That makes word choice tough, but you managed it well. Does a ballade use repeated last lines like this? It puts me in the mind of something like a villanelle. If I hazard a guess to meaning, it's that modern culture of filing to and from work and having our attention constantly on our computers/phones makes us little better than simple insects from millions of years ago. Not the clearest meaning of this batch of entries, but the construction is the most impressive.

Tough call, as all three entries are ones i could see as good enough to win any given write-off, though here they are against each other.

I like the conflation of leaf-drop to making tea. The rhymes all work well enough, but the rhythm is a bit odd here and there, like needing "smile" and "boils" to be two syllables, or the stress patterns of "glorious" and "and the mixture" being a little forced. It carries on about the leaves long enough that it feels like it's making a point, only for the narrator to decide he doesn't care and decline to draw a conclusion from it. And maybe that's the intended feeling. If so, I guess I understand why, but it does leave it as if it was on the verge of doing something only to leave it incomplete. To elaborate a bit, I've seen other pieces where such a narrator gives an implied shrug and shoos away the potential philosophical thought brewing in his head, but then some reason is given for it, like the worldly cares that need his attention. Without that but, this felt dismissive on principle, and that's what's not quite clicking with me as to why. For form, this appears to be a type of sonnet, though I'm not great at remembering the different versions.

Seems to be about an insect trapped in amber, appropriately enough for the prompt, but it was apparent enough without knowing the prompt. No structure to speak of, but I like the language here. You'd make me go look up what the reference to Adria meant, but the rest was clear. Free verse is kind of tricky to make impressive. It inherently takes less effort, but then it also doesn't get the odd turns of language required to compress words into certain rhythms and rhymes, so it can flow more naturally. But it also almost never feels like the way it's organized carries any meaning, so I'm left wondering whether the choice of where to break lines or start new stanzas is supposed to convey something I'm missing. Like if it was written as prose, does it lose any of its meaning? And maybe shaping it in a way that it's not obviously prose gets the reader to think about it in a more abstract form? It's kind of maddening at times, since I've been on both sides, feeling like I'm not getting so much out of free verse, but also being disappointed when putting a lot of effort into it that people are more dismissive of it.

Anyway, I've wandered far off the point.

Despite the possibility that it was easier to write this way, I still found it an interesting and pleasant read.

>>Baal Bunny
You'd think Roger would check that area for problems, but he typically won't unless you @ him.

The rhymes work fine, and there doesn't seem to be an intended meter. It reads more like a set of instructions, so if there's supposed to be more to it than that, I'm missing it. With one arm up, I guess the figure is waving? Cute enough for a short piece.