0
0
0
0
Hashtag
#NaPoMO
Advertisement · 728 × 90
Letter From a Reader Adam Zagajewski Translated by Clare Cavanagh Too much about death, too many shadows. Write about an average day, the yearning for order. Take the school bell as your model of moderation, even scholarship. Too much death, too much dark radiance. Take a look, crowds packed in cramped stadiums sing songs of hatred. Too much music, too little harmony, peace, reason. Write about those moments when friendship's footbridges seem more enduring than despair. Write about love, long evenings, the dawn, the trees, about the endless patience of the light.
Today’s poem for #nationalpoetrymonth
#LetterFromaReader by #AdamZagajewski, tr. #ClareCavanagh
(So what’re you writing about? And how do you keep the critics at bay?)
#NaPoMo #poetry
“Write about…”
9
1
0
0
The First Art Way back when in the Garden of Eden God would laugh, "Look at Adam naming things." The animals, the land, the sky, even his hand. This went on for some time, God pointing, Adam naming, Eve watching the names pile up. Eve thought they should save the words and she dug a deep well then filled it with the words. God was amused. Eve decided they needed a bucket to retrieve the words and Adam made one from bamboo and vines. Dropping it down with a gentle precision, they'd raise the bucket as slowly to their lips; with their thirst quenched they would sing new tunes or think. They dipped into their down- fall every time they took another drink. Soon the well was spilling over, the words stringing themselves together into rhyming snakes. Prayers, chants, songs, invocations abounded until they discovered they could question befeif; the words no longer needed them to speak. The first mistake was naming the apple that had fallen to the ground at their feet; the last was when they found the apple's skin stuck between their throat and their teeth. God was quite angry, as gods tend to be, and he started screaming, "I should smite thee, but if you take the well I will let you leave." Eve said "Let's go, it's a good deal Adam. God is not our responsibility."
Always felt like you don't write a poem as much as participate in it's creation. This touches on that and also the idea of beauty (and how Americans have abandoned beauty for wealth, tech, power, and entertainment)
#nationalpoetrymonth #PoetrySky #NaPoMo #poetry
9
3
1
0
We're so excited to reveal the cover to our annual #NaPoMo Issue! This is a free digital issue with the winner and runners up of our 18th NaPoMo Contest
issuu.com/ironhorserev...
0
0
0
0
We love to see your #NaPoMo prompt-inspired poems 🥰🙏🎉🎉🎉
5
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
the beach at sunset by Eloise Klein Healy The cliff above where we stand is crumbling and up on the Palisades the sidewalks buckle like a broken conveyer belt. Art Deco palm trees sway their hula skirts in perfect unison against a backdrop of gorgeous blue, and for you I would try it, though I have always forbidden myself to write poems about the beach at sunset. All the clichés for it sputter like the first generation of neon, and what attracts me anyway are these four species of gulls we've identified, their bodies turned into the wind, and not one of them aware of their silly beauty. I'm the one awash in pastels and hoping to salvage the day, finally turning away from the last light on the western shore and the steady whoosh of waves driving in, drumming insistently like the undeniable data of the cancer in your breast. We walk back to the car and take the top down for the ride home through the early mist. No matter what else is happening, this is California. You'll have your cancer at freeway speeds. I'll drive and park and drive at park. The hospital when I arrive to visit will be catching the last rays of the sun, glinting like an architectural miracle realized. I realize a miracle is what you need -a grain of sand, a perfect world where you live beyond the facts of what your body has given you as the first taste of death.
the beach at sunset by Eloise Klein Healy The cliff above where we stand is crumbling and up on the Palisades the sidewalks buckle like a broken conveyer belt. Art Deco palm trees sway their hula skirts in perfect unison against a backdrop of gorgeous blue, and for you I would try it, though I have always forbidden myself to write poems about the beach at sunset. All the clichés for it sputter like the first generation of neon, and what attracts me anyway are these four species of gulls we've identified, their bodies turned into the wind, and not one of them aware of their silly beauty. I'm the one awash in pastels and hoping to salvage the day, finally turning away from the last light on the western shore and the steady whoosh of waves driving in, drumming insistently like the undeniable data of the cancer in your breast. We walk back to the car and take the top down for the ride home through the early mist. No matter what else is happening, this is California. You'll have your cancer at freeway speeds. I'll drive and park and drive at park. The hospital when I arrive to visit will be catching the last rays of the sun, glinting like an architectural miracle realized. I realize a miracle is what you need -a grain of sand, a perfect world where you live beyond the facts of what your body has given you as the first taste of death.
Today’s poem for #nationalpoetrymonth
#thebeachatsunset by #EloiseKleinHealy
(my last Golden State poem: SoCal, the coast, and our brief lives)
#NaPoMo #poetry
“a grain of sand, a perfect world
where you live beyond the facts
of what your body has given you”
7
0
2
0
Good morning to DAY 14 of National Poetry month, and this incredible prompt from Lee Potts, editor of @stonecirclereview.bsky.social 📚🔥
@leepottspoet.bsky.social #poetry #prompt #NaPoMo
17
8
2
2
My poem “Dear Judy” is now out in the Spring 2026 issue of @solsticelitmag.bsky.social. It’s part of my ongoing series of epistolary duplex poems for my mother. And since it’s National Poetry Month, consider reaching out to a poet whose work has stayed with you. buff.ly/E8CZqtH
#duplexpoem #NaPoMo
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Good morning to Day 13 of National Poetry Month! A prompt from Catherine Rockwood today on the idea of “neutral” and painting and color! 🎨
#poetry #NaPoMo 📚💙 @martin65.bsky.social
11
8
0
0
Starting next week, we'll begin announcing the early #writers on Alphabet Box's #shortlist for Issue 9. There's still time to submit via Duosuma at duotrope.com/duosuma/subm...
#napomo #writer #poets #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity #poetry #callforsubmissions #writing #creativewriting #napowrimo
3
0
0
0
A Question A voice said, Look me in the stars And tell me truly, men of earth, If all the soul-and-body scars Were not too much to pay for birth.
Knuckle heads, block heads, and bone heads One would think After a lifetime of flipping coins That we’d be more open Kinder even To the other side
Today’s poems for #nationalpoetrymonth
#SmallPoemSunday
#AQuestion by #RobertFrost and one by me
#NaPoMo #poetry 🌎 🌌 ⛪️ 🕍 🕌 ⛩️ 🕋 📿 🪙
9
0
0
0
“so much depends on the ones who scrub”
Love this poem from Jane Shi for #NaPoMo @chaudierebooks.bsky.social 📚💙
@pipagaopoetry.bsky.social
19
9
0
0
We have a master class in poetry prompts from Molly Spencer today for National Poetry Month, Day 11! Don’t miss this beauty that features the poem “AND IF I FALL” by Carl Phillips!
@mspencerpoet.bsky.social #NaPoMo #poetry 📚💙
9
7
1
1
1
0
0
0
Happy to be included in Some Words effort to post a poem a day for #NaPoMo. Click on the photo to read the whole poem or check out the link below.
Huge thanks to editor Justin Carter.
#poetry #poetrycommunity
somewords.boards.net/thread/112/a...
4
0
0
0
My California BY LEE HERRICK Here, an olive votive keeps the sunset lit, the Korean twenty-somethings talk about hyphens, graduate school and good pot. A group of four at a window table in Carpinteria discuss the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi. Here, in my California, the streets remember the Chicano poet whose songs still bank off Fresno's beer soaked gutters and almond trees in partial blossom. Here, in my California we fish out long noodles from the pho with such accuracy you'd know we'd done this before. In Fresno, the bullets tire of themselves and begin to pray five times a day. In Fresno, we hope for less of the police state and more of a state of grace. In my California, you can watch the sun go down like in your California, on the ledge of the pregnant twenty-second century, the one with a bounty of peaches and grapes, red onions and the good salsa, wine and chapchae. Here, in my California, paperbacks are free, farmer's markets are twenty four hours a day and always packed, the trees and water have no nails in them, the priests eat well, the homeless eat well. Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown, everywhere is K-Town, everywhere is Armeniatown, everywhere a Little Italy. Less confederacy. No internment in the Valley. Better history texts for the juniors. In my California, free sounds and free touch. Free questions, free answers. Free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.
My California BY LEE HERRICK Here, an olive votive keeps the sunset lit, the Korean twenty-somethings talk about hyphens, graduate school and good pot. A group of four at a window table in Carpinteria discuss the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi. Here, in my California, the streets remember the Chicano poet whose songs still bank off Fresno's beer soaked gutters and almond trees in partial blossom. Here, in my California we fish out long noodles from the pho with such accuracy you'd know we'd done this before. In Fresno, the bullets tire of themselves and begin to pray five times a day. In Fresno, we hope for less of the police state and more of a state of grace. In my California, you can watch the sun go down like in your California, on the ledge of the pregnant twenty-second century, the one with a bounty of peaches and grapes, red onions and the good salsa, wine and chapchae. Here, in my California, paperbacks are free, farmer's markets are twenty four hours a day and always packed, the trees and water have no nails in them, the priests eat well, the homeless eat well. Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown, everywhere is K-Town, everywhere is Armeniatown, everywhere a Little Italy. Less confederacy. No internment in the Valley. Better history texts for the juniors. In my California, free sounds and free touch. Free questions, free answers. Free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.
Today’s poem for #nationalpoetrymonth
#MyCalifornia by #LeeHerrick
(Another ode to CA : the valley and its beautiful diversity) #NaPoMo #poetry ☀️🍑🍇🍷🇺🇸🇰🇷🇲🇽🇨🇳🇦🇲🇮🇹
“In my California, you can watch the sun go down
like in your California, on the ledge of the pregnant
twenty-second century…”
9
0
1
0
National Poetry Month: Prompt 11, from Jennifer A Sutherland 🌬️
Memoir & myth! @jasutherland.bsky.social
#poetry #NaPoMo 📚💙
12
7
0
1
I'm stealing this from @shadowjaime.bsky.social to wish all who celebrate a peaceful #Caturday
#NaPoMo 🐈😻🐈⬛
9
0
1
0
Spread beneath me it lies—lean upland sinewed and tawny in the sun, and valley cool with mustard, or sweet with loquat. I repeat under my breath names of places I have not been to: Crescent City, San Bernardino —Mediterranean and Northern names. Such richness can make you drunk. Sometimes on fogless days by the Pacific, there is a cold hard light without break that reveals merely what is—no more and no less. That limiting candour, that accuracy of the beaches, is part of the ultimate richness.
Today’s poem for #NationalPoetryMonth
#FlyingAboveCalifornia by #ThomGunn
(a love song to CA, as almost a break in bed) #NaPoMo #poetry
“on fogless days by the Pacific,
there is a cold hard light without break
that reveals merely what is - no more
and no less. That limiting candour,”
10
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
National Poetry Month: Prompt 10, from Mo Schoenfeld
Today is about ritual! 🕯️
@moschoenfeld.bsky.social #poetry #NaPoMo 📚💜
12
7
1
0
I love #trees!
(Even when they don't like me 🤧)
The more the better for our poor Planet 🌳🌴🌲
#NaPoMo
www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...
1
0
0
0
#NaPoMo #poetry
Every poet needs a treasure hoard says @hollyhopkins.bsky.social youtu.be/v1xfNTXzwjE?...
2
0
0
0
"Lavender All Over Again" Newspaper caption I see you in your backyard's lavender, post-lunch doze, dreaming someone you brought home last week who blurs to hummingbirds that fan your ears. Lavender buds pilled your sweatshirt in the restaurant garden you preferred, where we ate, gossiped, laughed, and downed a sizable carafe. You ate experience whole, sweetest when you lost control. I see you springing from your gluey sleep while foggy shade rolls toward your seat. You liked to party hard, still in your prime way past your prime, Give me wine wine wine all the time time time, stomped in punk dives' purple light, sweating, fists pumped high... Ardent life burned your heart and hands. You kept dancing until you could barely stand. In memory of Thom Gunn
Today’s poem for #NationalPoetryMonth
#LavenderAllOverAgain by #WSDiPiero
(A funeral poem with awe for his friend and colleague #ThomGunn)
#NaPoMo #poetry 🕯️ “Ardent life burned your heart and hands. You kept dancing until you could barely stand.”
9
0
1
0
picture of moon with poetry advice from SHINE
And now...for some #napomo tips from SHINE!
#shinepoetry
#poetrymonth
#poetry
#submissions
#poetrycommunity
#writingcommunity
5
0
1
0
Included in my poem, “In the New Year,” is a line from “Proof,” written and read by Cornelius Eady at Zohran Mamdani's inauguration—before I knew Eady would be reading at the event! #NaPoMo
2/2
0
0
0
0
Graphic screen shot featuring slices of bread decked with the purple and white petunias and the text: Moist Poetry Journal A HIGH HUMIDITY JOURNAL OF POETRY POETRY National Poetry Month: Prompt 9, from Anuja Ghimire
National Poetry Month: Prompt 9, from Anuja Ghimire
Get ready to TASTE the world! 🌸
moistpoetryjournal.com/2026/04/09/n...
#poetry #NaPoMo 📚💜
5
2
0
0
I hate how threads look on here and I'm little behind so I'm starting a new #NaPoMo thread now
This absolute banger by Brittany Rogers
2
0
1
0