Month: September 2026

FOCUS naturally pulls these poems toward attention—who has it, who loses it, and what happens next. Diana turns it inward during a panicked test; Lari needs it to survive a first mogul run; auntie jj redirects it toward a struggling ficus. This week’s seasonal challenge comes through especially clearly in Mark, where summer play gives way to “Fall is FOCUS time,” and more indirectly in Lari’s winter slope. Elsewhere, the word becomes pure zappai fuel: aliens require LOCUS FOCUS, while a dead frond garden suggests the toads have seriously neglected their one assigned job.

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This week we add movement. Bodies. Water. Wind. Travel. Leaving. Arriving. Falling. Rising. Staying still while everything else moves …

NIFTY is a cheerful little word, and today’s poems mostly use it with a wink. Diana turns it into dry sarcasm during a long train ride, Robo applies it improbably to a box containing a corpse, and Lari gives it the bright polish of a gift-catalog slogan. The seasonal prompt comes through most clearly in Mark and Mick: one gives us the movement of an outdoor fall game, while the other treats summer’s end as an excuse for one last slightly nutty outing. NIFTY may not sound especially poetic, but its casual optimism gives the poems something useful to play against.

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ASTER almost comes with the season built in. Asters are late-season flowers, so several poems naturally find themselves at that threshold where summer begins yielding to fall. Debbie’s guard walks through an aster bed at night; auntie jj brings one solitary bloom indoors beside soft sitar music; Lari gives the flower an amber snake for company. Other poets turn ASTER toward human comedy—Diana’s rejected bouquet ends up crushed, while Robo wears one in a dubious plaid lapel. It’s a good week for the seasonal challenge because nobody has to announce the season. The flower is already doing some of that work for them.

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9 September 2025 the first worku was played