Na/GloWriMo 2026 Day 2 -- Memory

 Big Feelings

all feelings big then
at eight, at twelve

pure longing caught
in a square

body, a nose
always running

couldn't
sport around
too clumsy
for bats and bases
racquets and fuzzy
yellow balls
but not ballet
my chunk
of a girl body
at barre, en pointe
counted in french 

like i was 

somebody like

i could fly

Na/glo/powrimo 2026 Day 1 Tanka

 Tanka for My Old Poems

old poems show up like

unexpected visitors

shake rain out from cloaks

puddling my mind's cluttered room

full moon shines in every drop

Day 15 Poem Inspired By Music

Tired of Being Tired Blues

I'm so tired of being tired
it makes me tired
so bone deep tired of being tired
it makes me tired
it don't matter how much I rest
I just stay tired and my life's a mess
I'm so tired of being tired
and that's the truth

Day 14 Under the Influence

Today's prompt was to write about a poet or poets who influence your work. I figured yesterday's poem on Emily Dickinson sort of counted. And it's hard to choose just one poet. So here's this.

Swirl

Under the Influence

Now i lay
me down
some hot-
cross buns
old mrs.
mack's back
and that English
boy band
in their yellow
submarine
Guthrie's land
was my land
New York
that's how
i started to be
a poet in
e.e. cummings
little letters in
the woods
with the woods
some mountains
and a river
of my own
and somehow
brautigan got
in there
and parker's
resume rhymes
brooks' sassy strut
frost's fence
whitman's lines
emily's image
hughes' melody
eliot's ragged claws
i got them all
or they got me
and that's very
the short version
of the story
of poetry
and me

Day 13 Stealing Emily

All the ideas and some of the words are Emily’s. I arranged them and took advantage of her style signature. As a poet I am ever in her debt.

                    1776

I wished to tell you what I’d stol’n—

Majuscules and Bone
Woods—loud with bees’ eternities
And Riddles in the skies

Wind—I took with Draughts
of Mind and ordinary Weather
There was no Stay to all my Thefts
The Heart—a Wilderness

Snakes and Robins transcended
Time—in nine Immortal Movements
A Universe in Filament
of Light for its Circumference

Day 12 Triolet

“The requirements of this fixed form are straightforward: the first line is repeated in the fourth and seventh lines; the second line is repeated in the final line; and only the first two end-words are used to complete the tight rhyme scheme. Thus, the poet writes only five original lines, giving the triolet a deceptively simple appearance: ABaAabAB”



Jasmine Bebop

Jasmine jumps like bebop to the brain
and her refrain’s keyed roses
all rhythm gets its juice from heart to brain
Jasmine jumps like bebop to the brain
wind whips all scent from noses to the brain
notes hook inside like thorns on roses
Jasmine jumps like bebop to the brain
and her refrain’s keyed roses

Day 11 Flower

Who Gave Me Back Geraniums

This poem is for Ursula
who gave me back geraniums
lemon-scented ones she kept
blooming in the windows
of her special ed classroom
(where I was her teacher’s aid)
who kept pots of them going
through winter somehow
and who gave me cuttings
which by some miracle
grew into lemon-scented
leaves then pink pompoms
in my own loft apartment
window and I say gave me
back because I’d watered
the ones on my grandfather’s
grave over and over and
geraniums grew only in pots
in the cemetery of my mind
and those were good geraniums
but their beauty was somehow
stolen by the sadness of the place
until Ursula filled them again with sun
then I went to France (after
Ursula) and the balconies
were all full of geraniums
and jasmine and now I
am in love with both
thanks to Ursula and France
who and which I love also