A silly poem I wrote yesterday for #PoetsonThursday #poetry today. It's called "Once in a Summer Park" C. 1/25/23 Victoria Leigh Bennett
Piney, pinny, piddy,
Down went all the ducks,
Over went to feed them
Folks with crumbs and clucks.
"Cluckest thou at me, sir?"
Quacked a stately drake,
One who'd fed on
Shakespeare,
In summer's park once spake.
His match in human form then
Who'd heard his reference* right
Responded, "No, but I cluck!"
And tossed a crumb for spite.
*Rom. & Jul., fight scene

This long comic poem is about an intelligent but simple woman who finds herself in need of a man, and can't decide upon means, as she has problems with body image. My humor should not offend anyone, because such jokes as I cracked at the time on her hapless head were at my own expense, as I resemble her. A sense of humor is necessary to get through life. It's also about Ovid's scandalous book, "The Art of Love," from which it;s titled. It's copyrighted 5/4/2021. #poetry Victoria Leigh Bennett

Two ecological poems published this year. The first, "An Ecologizing Crown of Sonnets," is a sonnet sequence (7), and applies a corrective to the dialogues some have when justifying lack of interest in ecology by their religious beliefs. It was first published in The Unconventional Courier in Oct. 2022. The second is far shorter and was first shown at Top Tweet Tuesday in Spring 2022, published by Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art in Nov. 2022. It's called "My Brother's Midnight Song." #poetry VLB

"The Unkindest Shot of All"--a short story whose title is taken from the speech of Marc Antony in "Julius Caesar" when he says that the stabbing of the tyrant Caesar by Brutus, his intimate friend, was "the unkindest cut of all." This is about MAGA and some of its casualities. #shortstories Victoria Leigh Bennett (Vicki Leigh) Copyright January 15, 2022.

My short story "The Golden Ocean," first published in Roi Faineant Literary Press Spring 2022, and then on mstdn.social recently. It was written during an actual coastal storm when the lights and computer were both threatening to go out/cut off. #shortstories Victoria Leigh Bennett (Vicki Leigh)

Today's poem for #PoetsonThursday on Mastodon at mstdn.social and at @PoetsonThursday on Twitter was "For an Old Friend." It was copyrighted 12/6/2022. The theme was to "write about a friendship you've had with a wild life form (not a domestic pet)." I wrote about a tree. #poetry

A fun, sly stab at Freudian theory in poetic form from my 2021 book, "Poems from the Northeast," seen here in the thumbnail. Some of these poems are also up in mstdn.social, but my hashtags here don't reflect them, so I guess that means they aren't showing here, so I'm putting them here, too. This poem is entitled "Loike a Bit o' Fun, Sweetheart?" Shown last week at PoetsonThursday on Twitter and the corresponding #PoetsonThursday monitored by Dave Garbutt and Alex Guenther on Mastodon. #poetry

My maintaining the point that if there's anything out there, that each person has his/her/their own version of God, and this is mine: #poetry Victoria Leigh Bennett (Vicki Leigh) "What God There Is" copyright 2022. First written for Top Tweet Tuesday, Spring 2022.

I have up in text on my website (creative-shadows.com) copy of my story "Catamite, Catalyst, Catamount." This is the audio file, of myself doing (an admittedly imperfect) reading. The issues center around the difference between an actual pedophile, and a sympathetic adult of a like sexual preference in the life of a young boy. This is a spoiler for the story, but conservatives have been so stupid over this issue that I value focus on HOW it happens. #shortstories Victoria Leigh Bennett (Vicki)

A flash of mine, called "Mr. Fancy-Schmanzy Pants." Just as they say everyone has at least one book in him, so does everybody (these days, probably, anyway) have at least one "band" story in them. This is mine. A little sexist attitude from the boys in the band, but what else would you expect of the average unenlightened ones? So, not really bucking for a content warning. #flashes this flash was originally published in The Alien Buddha Zine #42 (Sept.) 2022. Victoria Leigh Bennett (Vicki Leigh)