Poetry Duel #11 Results

​VS.

Poetry Duel 11 was again very close! On the left was Carl Sandburg's "Plaster" and on the right was my own "Real Boys". Both got the same number of votes but you, gentle voters, rated "Real Boys" at 4.75 and "Plaster" 4.5.
Very consistently the votes have been for the more recent poems so I am once again muddling things up and using a poem from a contemporary poet as the "published" or "established" poem. Drop by rate and vote!

Greg Schroeder "Real Boys"
There were boys leaning on the apple cart
Real boys, with real straw hats
Boys whose lips could touch yours
If either of you dared
But that, in the lamplight
Would be too much like something real.

Carl Sandburg "Plaster"
'I KNEW a real man once,' says Agatha in the splendor of a shagbark hickory tree.
Did a man touch his lips to Agatha? Did a man hold her in his arms? Did a man only look at her and pass by?
Agatha, far past forty in a splendor of remembrance, says, 'I knew a real man once.' ​