The beginning feels almost like an adolescent too nervous to ask out their crush, but by the end, it seems more adult than that. The rhymes are nice, and with the uneven meter, it feels like song lyrics.

With both entries, I don't see a connection to the prompt, but I've never cared too much about that.

Ha, I like the subversion of that last line from the well-known one. Nice sonnet form, rhymes are all clean, and the rhythm only has a couple of very minor forced spots. I like the way it points out that a lot of the beauty of the animals and plants in the world is really not meant for us at all, though in some cases our admiration is to their benefit.

This looks like it's going to be a haiku, but the first line is too long. Free verse then? It doesn't have a meter or rhyme scheme. As to meaning, I assume these ghosts are the other possibilities of what else he could have done. I like the idea of that, but he expresses no feelings about whether those other paths were good or bad, so I'm left not knowing what mood to get from this.

Cute, but feels like there's kind of weak context. The speaker is lamenting others' fate as well, yet his thoughts on those people aren't clear. Like I presume he's glad he's not in the homeless person's situation, but he doesn't express his feeling on it, just that it's a different scenario than he finds himself in. And with the running theme of waiting, I don't know what he's waiting for. The rhymes are clean. The meter is as well, if a little forced by word choice here and there. It's a fun little thing, as long as you don't go looking for too much meaning in it.

The prompt reminds me of the old days when Starman Theta and I would frequently submit song titles from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack.

It's contradictory to narrate breaking off when the dialogue ended with an ellipsis. They're opposite effects. A few details of phrasing here and there are off a bit or seem archaic. Why is "I bit my lips" in past tense? Also, you usually only bite one of them.

The pacing feels a bit off. The long-ish intro might work for a lengthier story, but it takes up more room here than it needs to. It creates atmosphere well enough, but none of that ends up being important, so I'm just waiting to find out what's going on here. By the time Daphne speaks, it's pretty clearly implied what the situation is, and then nothing else develops through the last half. It just confirms what's already been heavily foreshadowed and doesn't take it anywhere else. I like the mood it creates, but honestly, if this had been just the paragraph that begins with "Look," I wouldn't get anything less out of it. Make the rest of it consequential.

Nice fakeout that seems to be serious at the beginning. There's some repetitive language, like them gathering in a circle around the circle. Not a lot to say about this—it was amusing. I just wonder that someone who can conjure a pizza delivery can't whip up some fire to reheat it...

I don't get a sense for how many people are here, but it seemed more than just a few, so would one pizza be enough for them all?

I guess the only suggestion I'd make is about the disk/wedge phrasing. It's confusing at first, and I'm betting it's because you didn't want to make the reveal until later, except that happens just one line later, so I'm not sure it's worth that description to buy you one more line. I think it would be equally funny, and it'd avoid the awkward wording (which still sounds odd even after the reveal).

Rhymes are all clean, but the rhythm is forced in places, like where you had to italicize "the" to make it be stressed, and it's also odd to see "inspire" as 3 syllables.

As to meaning, I like the equating of the random path a photon follows when escaping the sun to the way writing ideas escape the brain. Simple but well-stated.

The more abstract poetry becomes, the more it goes over my head. I'm not good at figuring out deeply obscured meanings, so I'm probably not the audience for this. It sounds good, but I don't know what it means. My best guess is that someone is trying out gymnastics equipment and finding out they're not as good as they wish they were (or used to be), then making a metaphorical comparison to the wood and trees the equipment was made from. But then I don't see what that comparison means. No formal structure to analyze, so nothing to say there. It sounds nice, but I can't figure it out.

The sentiment is nice, that the speaker wishes he could enjoy the small moments around him rather than get caught up in more mundane demands on his time. Not familiar with the form, but it's somewhat similar to a sonnet. Your 12th line is 2 syllables short. While the overall meaning comes through well enough, some of the individual lines don't. Like I'm not sure what "Heaven's vault" is supposed to be, or why a brown brook would connote a sweet smell. Like if you used "clear" instead of "brown," the image comes across better, so I wonder why you chose brown and I'm missing something by not realizing why. Piercing a page with a hook to mark it is another odd image, but one I can at least understand.

Mostly well-written, but a few of the details went over my head.

This sounds like when I'm in the car or shower or bed or something, and I think of a cool story idea, and knowing my history, it's likely to be gone when I can do something about it. But I think surely I'll remember it. And then I don't.

It probably only speaks to people who have been in the same situation, i.e., authors. To anyone else, it's probably just an "oh, that sounds nice," but I like it. The rhyme and meter have no issues.

Last two lines have an extra syllable.

I'm not following what happens. The first speaker ends up sounding like he's about to say something else, but he never speaks again. At least I don't think so. It seems like the dunce is the speaker in the second stanza. They're arguing about something, but I can't tell what or why. Maybe if I knew what the title meant it'd give me a clue?

The rhymes all work well, with even a little internal rhyme, plus the alliteration in places. Aside from those last two lines being longer, the structure works out nicely.

This was really difficult to read.

This is a personal taste issue, but I always find it odd to read things that impart great wisdom and sophistication to animals, particularly when despite this seemingly advanced intelligence, they still act in very animal ways.

Though it seems like that's another symptom of effecting a kind of... I don't know, Victorian style? I feel like there's an obvious allegorical meaning to all this that's going over my head because it's obscured under a great number of words.

This is probably also something that's not necessarily your fault: at first, it seems like it'll be about the oncoming doom (pretty obvious the light is a meteor even though the story doesn't reveal that for a while),, but then it switches to philosophical discussions among the dinosaurs, often only semi-related. It left me not knowing what the thread was and perceiving the story as unfocused. Later, then two get brought together, and I'm not sure there's a good way of keeping the connection between the two strong from the beginning so the theme feels more unified.

I'm probably just not the audience for this.

>>Bad Horse
There used to be multiple voting phases, final being the last one, and if there weren't enough entries to do multiple rounds, that was the default name of the only round. It just means a period (possibly the only one) where people are free to vote and leave comments on the entries.

Nice lament on the life of a snowflake with a parallel to people in general. The rhyme scheme is flawless. The meter is fine in syllable count, but the stress pattern is a tad forced here and there. Not too much to say about it, but it was a nice read. I liked the kind of subtle "six" that many people might not catch the significance of.

I'm guessing this is one of those scenarios where there are very few males left, so ones that can't help propagate the species are considered useless. In that case, though, it's not like leaving him alive would hurt anyone, since the description of the city certainly doesn't make it seem like resources are critically limited and can't be spared on anyone who can't be part of the solution. So maybe the opposite, where women are limited and need a diverse gene pool, so those who can't provide one are a burden? Her line about "can't afford" is the only thing that provides any context on why he has to die, but it's vague enough that I don't get the bigger picture. And as part of that, I don't know who to root for. It might be I'd agree he needed to go. There's some sympathy in it being something he can't help, though for all I know, he's a terrible person. My best guess is it's just a piece against eugenics or some such. I'd toyed with the idea she was some sort of alien race trying to root out the last few humans still living hidden among her people, but her comment about DNA test wouldn't jive with that, since they'd already have the evidence they needed. This is on the verge of working.

On the mechanical side, there are a few editing misses and odd word choices, but nothing too serious.

Given who wrote this, I wonder if it's partly or completely drawn from real life.

It feels like it was a last-minute entry without time to edit in some ways, most notably how it uses the same word close together in a few places: "turned aside from the machine’s advice and chose a reasonable-looking side path, turning," "stretches of road stretched," and "may make the attempt and see what may come of it. I may," to name a few examples.

The beginning postulates multiverses, and it's kind of a strange start, since it really creates the sense that the story will be about that, but it's a preamble, then an event is described, then it's linked to the preamble as an application of it. It's easy to understand after the fact, and while it is misleading initially, it's a short enough piece that it won't be confusing. On the multiverse front, I was getting a Noein vibe from it, which is one of my favorite anime series of all time, and I remain surprised to this day at how obscure it seems to be. It won awards, was played on a somewhat known network over here, it had a very unique art style, the music was wonderful, and I'll never get off my soapbox recommending it.

Anyway.

You always hear of that "life flashing before your eyes" phenomenon, and I've been in a similar situation to this, when a deer jumped in front of my car at night, and I could see it hanging suspended there, seemingly in slow motion, and I felt closer to what this story says than the cliched one. It was high enough that I was sure it'd blast through the windshield and kill me, and I just had kind of a calm acceptance. Then it bounced off the hood, and I was fine. Though it ruined my car, less than a quarter mile from my destination on a drive of over 3 hours.

All that said, this story isn't making a point so much as vividly bringing you into the feeling of a single moment, it does that well, and it's a perfectly valid thing for flash fiction to do that longer fiction really can't get away with.

Pretty much mirrors what Frost's famous poem says. Fits the haiku form well. Haiku are tricky, in that it's easy to write one, but it's hard to write one where it feels like every word is perfect and the whole thing stands out. For instance, the "hopeful" here feels like it's lacking context and thus doesn't really inform the rest. If I remove that, it still says what Frost did, and adding it back doesn't create any new meaning. It's not bad at all, just fine grains of looking for how to judge these, since they're all pretty good this round.

I kind of like how this was constructed, but in the end, it feels less like there's an actual message and more like a mad lib. There's almost a story here, and if you could have made a coherent narrative out of it, I would have been impressed. Now, it's more like "here are some words it could have been saying," and it's harder to say there was as much artistry involved. It's a valid way to generate a prompt, but it almost puts more on the reader to invent the story than the poet. Maybe another tickle was in order?

Hm, I like this. The rhyme and meter are both very clean, and the way the subsequent stanzas borrow consecutive lines from the first is a nice effect. Kind of like a pantoum, in a way, for how they change their meaning by being used in a new context. Most of it seems to talk to tolerance of gender identity, but the last one feels more like being kind in general. I could still buy it being a consequence of that, though, in that the former is an element of the latter. Nicely done.

Not a form I'm familiar with, but it's kind of close to a Shakespearean sonnet. Rhymes and rhythm mostly good, but just a little forced in a couple spots. I'm having a little trouble figuring out the meaning. I think it refers to two people who cared about each other but are now far apart, but I couldn't tell whether they still care for each other or if this is post-breakup. Or maybe one's moved on and the other hasn't. The language in the poem itself seems that way, that the speaker is telling the other person they need to let go, but the title implies the opposite (nice pun there, btw). Maybe it's just that the prompt is a common expression I've never heard before, so I don't know what meaning it inherently carries.

The horse line in particular felt odd, as maybe a way of saying the distance is so vast that a horse couldn't traverse it? That was my read of it, but that's an odd choice of transportation reference, given no other context why that would be the most relevant one. Unless it's referring to ponies and the breakdown of the magic of friendship between the two? I'm kind of reaching for ways to interpret it.

The atmosphere is good, and while I could see some readers feeling like the early stanzas' focus on the technicalities of biological circulation is a tangent that runs too long, I thought it made an effective slow transition between the literal heart and the figurative one, possibly indicating the speaker's reluctance to talk about the latter.

Structured as if adhering to a form, but no meter or rhyme, so it's essentially free verse. A few language blips, like "visit to me" is really oddly worded. I like the way the prompt is tied in, but I wish it had a stronger connection, as it's really only a circumstance the recipient has endured, and it's not given a thematic purpose or a link to a shared memory of the two. I think that would strengthen the piece as a whole and make it feel like the prompt got more than a token inclusion. The last stanza is strong, as the constant use of "please" creates an intense desperation. The mood here works well.

Free verse, so no form to analyze. I get a different feeling from this when I consider that title. On its own, the poem seems to say the recipient is lost in memory and can't (maybe due to the ink smearing from the rain?) or won't internalize what message is on it due to it being painful. But taken with the title, it makes me think the first couple lines refer to the mailman having dropped it accidentally and it was meant for someone else. Nice melancholy mood piece.

Another where the stresses are a bit forced at times, but the rhymes are mostly clean (bother/brother is a stretch). I like that the meter is different on the 2nd and 4th lines so that it throws things off balance in a good way. It's a standard breakup plot, but it's done well. The use of the flowers to convey that was very effective, in that the single image says a whole lot within the space of just a few words.

Crap, I missed a poetry round. Can't vote or do author guessing, but I can still review.

I'm trying to analyze the form here. It's not one I'm familiar with, but seeing authors invent their own is good too. There's a mostly consistent syllable count per line, but the stress pattern is sometimes forced. Rhymes appear to be an ABCA pattern with each stanza's C becoming the next one's B, wrapping back to the beginning as well. Though like the stress pattern, the rhymes are forced here and there (card/regards, tears/here).

As to story, this one was really nice, someone who's affected by a memory and then appreciates the kindness of a stranger trying to help. I liked it a lot, and I can see why it won.