#NaPoMo

[april-is]

April 21, 2024: April Morning, Jonathan Wells

April Morning Jonathan Wells You are living the life you wanted as if you'd known what that was but of course you didn't so you'd groped toward it feeling for what you couldn't imagine, what your hands couldn't tell you, for what that shape could be.

This Sunday the rain turns cold again and steady but the window is slightly open and there is the vaguest sense of bird song somewhere in the gaps between the buildings because it's spring the calendar says and the room where you are reading is empty yet full of what loves you and this is the day that you were born.

--

Today in:

2023: What I Did Wrong, Marie Howe 2022: This Morning, Jay Wright 2021: Kiss of the Sun, Mary Ruefle 2020: Teaching English from an Old Composition Book, Gary Soto 2019: Easter, Jill Alexander Essbaum 2018: Annunciation, Marie Howe 2017: The Promise, Marie Howe 2016: In the Woods, Kathryn Simmonds 2015: Heat, Jane Hirshfield 2014: What Remains, Ellery Akers 2013: 30th Birthday, Alice Notley 2012: Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life], Bruce Smith 2011: The Forties, Franz Wright 2010: Prayer of the Backhanded, Jericho Brown 2009: A Primer, Bob Hicok 2008: Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry, Howard Nemerov 2007: Open Letter to the Muse, Kristy Bowen 2006: A Sad Child, Margaret Atwood 2005: The Crunch, Charles Bukowski

[juno-writes]

Sry abt being inactive, my writing has all been poems because of NaPoMo ;-; (which im not good at lmao)

[momoetry-blog]

O is for Obsessed

O is for obsessed I think I might have been from the start You were cute, you were hilarious, You wiggled right into my heart O is for obsessed  The problem was you were shy, I wasn’t sure you liked me, But I was sure I had to make you mine O is for obsessed  I asked you on a date The rest, as they say, is history As I’m currently laying next to my soulmate.  -Nicole Smith,…

[cir-papi-di4bl0]

Queering The Lines

What are these things we call lines? These wretched things that sinisterly make their way between us These things that claim to define, but mainly live to box us in, Checking for progress Then narrowing down the fields meant for playing. Why do we draw them? Call them into our bubbles Then cry when bubbles pop? Where even do they stop? What the fuck do they do aside from blur or sharpen? Reminding us of those defiant enough to cross them, Or us... Our boundaries and declarations carved in trees... Or etched from window dust... Or formed , It's not right that the majority are straight. Or feathery, light, or white, or broken. Paper thin, Paper thin, As if manifested from air. I love mine thick and punchy Sometimes lingering overnight... and very curvy Like wrapping tightly around corners and buildings Like a concert, the box office, or the county. It's scary to think they patrol pelvic crevices without care... They even snatch back our temple and baby hair.

Just where do these things come from? From fatigue? From finishing? From determination? From the obtuse or acute? From A, all the way across the C to B? I mean, please... What actually ARE these? I ask because they're waiting Quite literally... And they're on every list Bent and grossly misshapen. I can't escape this. They parallel, follow, and trace while fishing… Invasively towing me… reeling me back in… Their inky, sometimes wispy, and wiry grasp. Clasping at bare arms, elbows, knees and, hands, Eyelids especially, and exposed ankles with tans. Their tendrils, ever visible on every clock. They even dictate the patterns and weave of My socks!

Like seriously... Who gave them this authority?! To crawl down throats, giving food and oxygen to breathe Or telling me how to get to G'ma's house, And just how do they know her, anyway?! All this up and down business has me ready to throw it and life Down the pipes! You know what, lines...? Whether leading the fray or stray To all of this, I pickup My jaw Ley down and say... Well played. Fine even... Divinely done. Even the best laid plans Started and ended with you. Every single, or last 1.

[mariothepoet]

breaking

she treats me like a pet monkeygives enough of her palm to devour the Mazuri & the back of her hand when I won’t be obedientthere is nothing like alone crumbled flakes of miserable aches the grinding of teeth into rumbledouble dutch with livewireshurting me is a carnival gamemy feelings are mine to protect but she knows how to play me like a celloopening my heart like a shoe box taking everything…

[barbaragenova]

I still remember the humour and grace of a curator who turned it down and added "boy howdy is this dark". Glad it found a permanent home on FERAL. It’s called Prosperity Gospel, it’s about - 

[shesanargonaut]

In the Foothills

One day, I will tell my grandchildren

about my time here

about the two weeks spent in prayer

watching the clouds cascading over the mountains

about the coyotes and the deer

the water that poured over our hands and faces

tasting of metal and medicine

the laughter we shared into the night

I will tell them about how

we didn’t truly sleep

woken by cop light and nerves

woken from dreams by visions of mortality

woken by a wind that swept around us

like a current

turbulent and cold

I will tell them about the brilliant sunlight that

would wake us each day and about

the morning near the end

when I watched the sunrise

felt eyes on the back of my neck

turned and saw an owl

perched on a tree

how I stared into its eyes

and did not fear death

understanding that if

I should die here

it would be okay

because

I love the land so much

that I would die

a thousand deaths

to protect her

[weirdspiritpod]

Establishing Honesty with a God Can Really Knock You on Your Ass

I asked him why the gods expressed

their flowering through rape myths

He looked at me with one dark

eye and said, “I don’t know

how you want me

to answer this question.”

[insanepoetics]

— Basil, time (non linear) from escapril prompts day six

[survivingthemic]

Kicking off NATIONAL POETRY MONTH & SEXUAL ASSAULT AWARENESS MONTH strong! #StayInAndWrite with us! 3-5pm CDT I'll be facilitating a trauma-informed writing workshop for survivors! The workshop will be in English but all welcome from all time zones! Zoom link in @survivingthemic Instagram bio 💯 Surviving the Mic: Virtually Together is a twice monthly online space dedicated to the perspectives, experiences and artistic expressions of survivors of sexual harm. FIRST & THIRD Thursdays from 3-5pm CST It can be difficult to feel as we have permission to discuss the impact of sexual violence or to even know what resources are still available to survivors during the COVID-19 pandemic, physical distancing that's become necessary in order to protect all of us, and uprisings against violence towards Black people. However, survivors know that the impact of sexual harm knows no limits and may be more deeply felt as people practice physical distancing. Therapeutic practices and other self-care practices may have been disrupted or have become inaccessible. Follow on IG @survivingthemic and @themojdeh (facilitator) and our friends-in-the fight @socialpracticelabs (mutual aid project) #SurvivingSocialDistance #SurvivingTheMic #TraumaInformed #WritingWorkshop #PoetryWorkshop #SpeakTruth #DomesticViolence #SexualViolence #GenderBasedViolence #SAAM #sexualassault #sexualassaultawarenessmonth #napomo #nationalpoetrymonth #mojdehstoakley #sextrafficking #mmiw #SurvivorsStories #blackpoetsspeakout #blm #poetsofinstagram #poetsofig #writersofinstagram #childhoodsexualabuse #childhoodabuse #writingtogether #quaruntine #writingchallenge #womenwriters https://www.instagram.com/p/CNHyQ0QhVCn/?igshid=w5v6u7274f4g

[nimeve]

Lets see how many poems I end up writing this month

[april-is]

April 8, 2023: Neither Time Nor Grief is a Flat Circle, Christina Olson

Neither Time Nor Grief is a Flat Circle Christina Olson

The camellias are blooming in the rain, red and pink, real-life Valentine’s Day decorations. Their petals are not confetti or streamers, their petals are decaying organic matter that will fall and rot and feed the ground. And whoever said that grief was a flat circle was wrong, too; our friend Andy is dead now, and my grief is not flat. My grief is a sharp, hot thing that pokes me in the spine whenever I am crabbily unloading our dishwasher or I spend another Saturday sleepwalking the internet. Your one precious life, says my grief. Huh. I tell my grief to get lost but it stays here with me, wedges itself between my hip and the arm of the couch, like a dog that wants to be close but doesn’t really understand physics. Like it is a dog, I push my grief away and then I feel bad and invite it back, pat the cushion next to me, smell its wet breath. It’s oppressive, this grief, yet without it I feel terribly alone, wandering through the pandemic. The virus didn’t kill Andy—his heart quit. He went into a coma and he died. One day he was alive and now he’s not. The camellias are wet in the rain, no one told them about Andy. One day I’ll have more dead friends than living ones and people will think I’m lucky because that means I’ll have lived a long time. And that I had friends. I thought that writing this poem might help, but it didn’t. And so I tip this poem into an envelope and I mail it to you, reader. It’s yours now: the grief, the dog, the shuddering flowers. When you are lonely, this poem falls out of the book you’re not reading. You’re crying now, or maybe it’s just the rain.

--

(Did you catch the Mary Oliver allusion?)

Other poems on COVID and on grief.

Today in: 

2022: Pippi Longstocking, Sandra Simonds 2021: Waking After the Surgery, Leila Chatti 2020: Gutbucket, Kevin Young 2019: Insomnia, Linda Pastan 2018: How Many Nights, Galway Kinnell 2017: The Little Book of Hand Shadows, Deborah Digges 2016: Now I Pray, Kathy Engel 2015: Why I’m Here, Jacqueline Berger 2014: Snow, Aldo, Kate DiCamillo 2013: from The Escape, Philip Levine 2012: Thirst, Mary Oliver 2011: Getting Away with It, Jack Gilbert 2010: *turning, Annie Guthrie 2009: I Don’t Fear Death, Sandra Beasley 2008: The Dover Bitch, Anthony Hecht 2007: Death Comes To Me Again, A Girl, Dorianne Laux 2006: Up Jumped Spring, Al Young 2005: Old Women in Eliot Poems, David Wright

[juno-writes]

Bibliomancy (Frankenstein) Poetry

Personally don't like calling it a "bibliomancy" poem so I call it a Frankenstein poem (which is more fitting anyway). Basically what we did was pick out random books of our liking from the library and turn them into poems by doing like randomizers to tell the line and paragraph and page and stuff. I made a couple because they're really really fun to make. Here they are!:

1 (Vampire Smell)

In spite of the thick snow now covering every landmark,

The vampire holds the stake in the air.

“What about people?”

“What's that smell?”

That stupid guidance counselor isn’t gonna shut up about it,

I’m enough like her to understand.

(books used: FLCL, Go For It Nakamura, Howl’s Moving Castle, Toilet Bound Hanako-kun 4, Wayward Son, The Ickabog)

2 (Conversation)

“I’d be halfway to Porthaven in two strides!” she said as she emptied the pan of eggs.

“I don’t know, better ask Neil”

The dog-man sat down on Michael’s feet, staring tragically.

“Since he's an evil demon” one of the boys said, “he’ll lose his life”

Her eyes were on that white light,

The blackened name when we first set up the castle.

(Book used: Howl’s Moving Castle)

3 (Experiments)

“Good for you!

N.O. utilizes the right and left brain thought processes”

Like it’ll do him any good.

He quietly left the museum.

(Toilet Bound Hanako-kun 4 and FLCL)

[momoetry-blog]

N is for Naricissist

N is for narcissist  You should win an award for being the best Making others feel insignificant  Causing unimaginable emotional distress N is for narcissist  You could do no wrong Everything was her fault  You made her feel weak, pretending to be strong N is for narcissist  I hear you mellowed as you aged I give 0 fucks about your redemption arc Every thought of you still fills me…

[tauruswolftrail]

April Poetry Month

Poem #1

[mariothepoet]

finding the path

along a slim road the signsare hard to decipher from a distancethere is a path to something betterbut the steering wheel plays like a slide pianoyou swerve, veer toward the shoulder,in a consistent course correction how to do the right thingat the right time to remain safe there are detours and construction zonesstop signs and the railroad crossinglooms heavy with dangerif you are ever stopped…