Taste of Honey

08 October 2025

After an Excellent Workout / Uncorked Champagne

★★★★½

9/10

Rating Description: Exuberant and sensory-rich. The cascade of bubble imagery creates genuine momentum, carrying the reader through a fizzy journey from gym to reverie. The “poetic Möbius strip” concept is...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 63

06 October 2025

The Cat that Never Came Back

★★★★

8/10

This poem showcases David Plahm’s gift for narrative voice and unexpected tenderness. The cat persona is fully realized—cocky, sensory-driven, unapologetically hedonistic—yet the poem earns its emotional payoff by revealing vulnerability...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 62

05 October 2025

A Repository for a Stray Thought

★★★½

7/10

This poem embodies the playful, unguarded spirit that defines much of David Plahm’s work. Its charm lies in its refusal to take itself too seriously while still delivering genuine moments...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 60

03 October 2025

Dreaming

★★★★½

9/10

“Dreaming” is one of David Plahm’s most lush and accomplished pieces—a sustained rhapsody that earns its length through relentless image-making and genuine emotional escalation. The poem’s strength lies in its...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 10

02 October 2025

My Tears

★★★★

8/10

“My Tears” demonstrates the power of restraint. At just over 20 lines, it accomplishes what many longer poems cannot: it creates a complete emotional arc—from obscured vision to clarity, from...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 9

01 October 2025

Cause & Effect: The Lady, the Sand, the Result

★★★★

8/10

This is an ambitious poem that takes real structural risks. The pairing of a simple love note with an extended autobiographical allegory creates productive tension—we understand the hug in the...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 12

01 October 2025

My Lovely Lady

★★★

6/10

“My Lovely Lady” is intentionally slight—and therein lies both its charm and its limitation. The poem succeeds completely at what it sets out to do: express gratitude with warmth and...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 9

29 September 2025

You Are/The One

★★★★

8/10

“You Are/The One” is an interesting formal experiment that mostly succeeds. The decision to present two versions of essentially the same poem creates a kind of call-and-response effect, allowing readers...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 9

28 September 2025

Cuteness

★★★★

8/10

“Cuteness” is delightful in its specificity. Where many love poems content themselves with generalities (eyes, lips, hands), Plahm goes granular: dimpled knees, freckled toes, a quivering little finger, a perking...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 12

28 September 2025

My Plant Named Lady

★★★½

7/10

“My Plant Named Lady” is an unusual entry in the collection—deliberately simple where other poems are lush, deliberately childlike where others are complex. This is both its strength and its...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 16

28 September 2025

Art(ificial)

★★★½

7/10

“Art(ificial)” is one of Plahm’s most conceptually ambitious poems, built around a typographical conceit that allows “Art” to mean multiple things simultaneously. The wordplay is genuinely clever: the parenthetical formatting...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 14

28 September 2025

Sacred Light

★★★★

8/10

“Sacred Light” is one of Plahm’s most accomplished love poems, achieving a sustained lyricism that justifies its title. The choice of candlelight as central image is inspired—it provides warmth without...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 6

26 September 2025

Inside is Precious

★★★★

8/10

A quietly elegant piece that rewards close attention. Plahm demonstrates restraint here—the short, breath-like lines create a meditative rhythm that mirrors the act of appreciating someone fully. The progression from...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 9

24 September 2025

The Loving Embrace

★★★★½

9/10

This poem showcases Plahm at his most tactile and emotionally exposed. The conceit of hands as the central image proves remarkably versatile—carrying weight both literal and metaphorical across the poem’s...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 5

24 September 2025

Nectar Bytes & Thorns

★★★★

8/10

An ambitious piece that successfully marries the aphoristic with the personal. Plahm’s “nectar bytes” concept—wisdom fragments earned through experience’s thorns—provides a unifying framework that holds the poem’s varied modes together....

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 10

22 September 2025

Charlie (A Pantry Portrait)

★★★½

7/10

A playful, surprising little poem that demonstrates Plahm’s range beyond the romantic and metaphysical. The central conceit—eulogizing a can of tuna—is handled with genuine wit, and the poem earns its...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 12

21 September 2025

I’ll Never Know

★★★★

8/10

A hypnotic meditation on romantic obsession that succeeds through sheer emotional honesty. The incantatory repetitions (Oh—Yes—No—Woe—My) could feel gimmicky but instead create genuine momentum, building toward the devastating final surrender....

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 9

20 September 2025

A Rush

★★★★

8/10

A compact, emotionally resonant piece that accomplishes more with less. The short, breath-like lines create a sense of urgency that mirrors the subject matter—the rush itself. Plahm wisely resists over-explaining;...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 9

19 September 2025

The Unicorn’s Dance: Science and Soul

★★★★

8/10

An ambitious piece that succeeds by embracing its own contradictions. The prose sections risk breaking the spell of the poetry, but Plahm handles the transitions with surprising grace—the scientific framing...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 6

18 September 2025

Painter as a Poet/Poet as a Painter

★★★

6/10

A deliberately raw, experimental piece that prioritizes spontaneity over polish. The opening question about Michelangelo and Shakespeare carries genuine intellectual weight, and the list of paradoxical emotional states (relaxing yet...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 11

18 September 2025

Every—

★★★★

8/10

A masterclass in compression. This tiny poem punches well above its weight, using the familiar currency of time and money to make an unfamiliar point feel fresh. The repetition of...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 9

18 September 2025

A Shirt

★★★★

8/10

A deceptively simple piece that accomplishes more in twelve lines than many poems do in fifty. The paired haiku structure creates a satisfying call-and-response effect: first the speaker examines their...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 9

17 September 2025

Aurum

★★★★½

9/10

A sumptuous, unapologetically romantic poem that commits fully to its golden conceit and is richer for it. The blazon tradition—cataloguing the beloved’s beauties—is handled with fresh energy, and the medieval...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 8

15 September 2025

Bertha’s Broadside

★★★★

8/10

A joyously irreverent piece that finds the sacred in the profane—or at least in the fluorescent-lit aisles of Walmart. Plahm’s gift for wordplay is on full display: the “berth/Bertha” pun,...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 10

09 September 2025

Sunny Beaches and Calm Breezes (I Wish)

★★★★

8/10

A powerful illness narrative that earns its epic scope. The cascading natural disasters could feel excessive, but Plahm maintains control through the tight parallel structure and the gradual inward movement...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 45

08 September 2025

Captured

★★★★

8/10

A masterfully structured poem that earns its emotional payoff through disciplined escalation. The opening stanzas accumulate dread with cinematic precision—wild animal, criminal, roadkill—while the refrain’s variations (“exposed,” “caught,” “stripped,” “drained”)...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 9

06 September 2025

A Kiss Rose

★★★★

8/10

A charming, playful exploration of romantic awakening that succeeds through its central conceit: the “Kiss Rose” as both object and action, gift and genesis. The dense rhyme scheme (rose/nose/glows/flows/knows) creates...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 42

06 September 2025

Are You?

★★★★

8/10

A tender, devotional lullaby that succeeds through its deliberate pacing and liturgical structure. The meta-framing—explicitly instructing the reader how to receive the poem—could feel gimmicky but instead creates genuine warmth,...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 42

06 September 2025

Lady Slicker the Kicker

★★★★

8/10

An exuberant, percussive love poem that uses athletic imagery to capture devotion’s physical intensity. The triplet repetitions create genuine rhythmic propulsion—reading it aloud feels like a stadium chant building toward...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 25

01 September 2025

When You Know (Something More)

★★★★

8/10

A tender, layered meditation on what makes someone truly beautiful. The poem’s structure—surface observation deepening into philosophical inquiry—mirrors the act of coming to know another person over time. The anaphoric...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 29

30 August 2025

Foundation

★★★★

8/10

A winningly self-deprecating celebration of bodily acceptance disguised as comedy. The poem’s structure—absurdist list building toward philosophical pivot—demonstrates Plahm’s skill at hiding wisdom inside humor. The Fred Flintstone reference and...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 30

29 August 2025

Do You Know?

★★★★

8/10

A tender check-in poem that earns its emotional weight through gentleness rather than grandeur. The anaphoric “You do know” opening establishes intimacy—the speaker isn’t declaring anything new but reminding the...

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🐝 by David Plahm

♡ 14