NaPoWriMo Day 7: A Wife on Writing and Men

Day 7 of NaPoWriMo, I followed the prompt and created two lists. One that lists all of my identities and another that lists how I feel powerful or vulnerable. I am a wife and a writer and my husband makes me feel powerful and encourages me to grow as a writer, I know that not every relationship is this way.

A Wife on Writing and Men

You chose well even if you didn’t know it at the time.

It only matters that you know it now and

That he knows how much you appreciate

The hours of solitude at your little desk.

It only matters that you tell him by writing a poem

And leave it in his lunch for him to find.

You know you could have chosen a man

Who wanted to keep you back.

You could have chosen a man who didn’t see the point

of writing your words on a page or

You could have chosen someone who

Burned your words with envy.

But you didn’t, so never forget how he holds you in place

When you sit in your chair and gather doubt

Around you like a sickness. He washes it away.

His voice is rare, but it is full of words

most men don’t have the courage to say. 

NaPoWriMo Day 6: A Small Revelation

For day six of NaPoWriMo, I followed the prompt and tried out different line sizes and experimented with space.

A Small Revelation

you pick up a rock and it’s a rock

but when you feel it

its edges

                smooths

                                roughs

it becomes         more

it becomes c o l o r

when you take your finger over it              take your

                                                                                        time

                                                                                                  pause in its crevices    

                                                                                                                                 indents

                                                                                                                                            caverns

its becomes more than a rock

when you            sip          its grains and scratch off its pieces          it becomes    

               

a landscape

a piece of something large           but

                                                           no less significant

Day 5: NaPoWriMo - In the Flat

Used Day 5's prompt and used the photo below and took inspiration from the Basque poem 

"TEILATUETAN LAN EGITEN DUEN JENDEA" by Harkaitz Cano

Sure they are hungry wild dogs

Flea-bitten deep to the bone and glory

Here in the flatlands all of us are bone deep

And flat, the land so flat trees hide.

We’re all hungry for shadows

we build like the moles, hills out of the flatness

to hide our bodies

from the sun and sky

to build ourselves the possibility of having a shadow cast

against our landscape and turn our flatlands

into more than the plane that we know

but a place where we can bask in the dark

and not feel so wide, so exposed

and the hungry dogs feel less hungry

our bodies no longer the tallest thing in the flat.

NaPoWriMo Day 4: Chaos

Chaos

A hologram grows difficult

Music becomes red, red becomes human

She played the banjo and violin

The thin line of logic separates

As the butterfly from the chrysalis

Your eyes deceive into universe

The blast and the suck, stars die

Music plays on, our capillaries grow

Difficult and gold becomes human

She sang a Sousa march in the church

And one day we’ll walk into the sun

And believe our mother ironed

Our bed sheets with her love,

But we’ll find she had a tool

That heated and cooled

But it too died like the stars

She too died like the stars

Her music no longer human

a black hole nothing feels like

Living.

NaPoWriMo Day 3: In a Certain Order

I'm 10 minutes late to day three, but no matter what I still wrote it! This is a list of poem titles sewn together. I little lumpy, like a homemade quilt, but it more or less works.

In a Certain Order

In a certain order, the roots grow thick.

Special numbers in dance cards, in

the river chameleon, these weapons

come natural, comb and poppy

concentric circles in the humor

of predators and paper females

on Sunday’s she feigns pretentious

into serial waterfalls and sips bubbly.

Maybe the world grows colder, but

In a certain order, the frost seals

the summer into the earth and

she cartwheels into spring

her blue boat, her glass slipper

her body moving into poetry.

NaPoWriMo Day 2: Snow Bird

This poem was originally in third person plural, but I changed it to second. It makes the meaning of the poem change slightly and makes it more personal.

Snow Bird

You travel south for the winter,

your wrinkled hands steer your RV.

You park in the grand lot of Arizona

where you nest, squawk, sip margaritas,

lay out your creaking joints, and sleep.

One night in the RV park, you watch

a woman and her two boys fight the police,

drop their back packs and belongings;

rounded up like livestock and cuffed.

Their things sit in the dust until you

get up and throw all of it in the trash.

The next day you wake up slow,

stretch, make breakfast, strong coffee,

rustle your wisps of gray hair,

perch in the sun, and watch like a crow;

your beak bitter and sharp.

NaPoWriMo: Day 1 - Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food

The first day of NaPoWriMo. It never feels like spring until National Poetry Month comes around. Writing a poem a day for thirty days is a way for everyone to awaken to spring and to sun, to get our heads out of hibernation and winter and open our eyes new. Happy National Poetry Month! Hope you'll join everyone for the challenge to write a poem a day.

Today's prompt asks for us to write a poem about a secret shame or a secret pleasure. My poem is both a shame and a pleasure...

Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food

The empty pint contains nothing

so it has never contained anything;

tabula Rasa, a blank slate.

I cleaned the chocolate out, no residue,

just water droplets, the lid is wet too.

You will not find it on the counter

or at the top of the recycling bin.

I buried it in the garbage can

covered it up with carrot scraps,

banana peels, and coffee grounds,

never to be seen again.

Not a calorie or gram of fat passed

these lips.

But,

someone, I will not name names,

looked in the freezer and saw the hole,

the place where something’s missing.

They shut the freezer and looked at me,

                                                                and only me,

handed me the car keys and pointed

in the direction of the grocery store.

“Go get me some more.”