From NaPoWriMo 2025 (Day Twenty Eight): Welcome back, all. As of today, there’s just three days left in this year’s Na/GloPoWriMo.
Today, our featured participant is Mariyah, who brings us a poignant take on Modigliani portrait in response to Day 27’s painting-based prompt.
Today’s daily resource is El Museo del Barrio, a New York City museum focused on the experience of Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans in the United States. The museum’s website provides highlights from its permanent collection, as well videos exploring the art and artists featured.
Last but not least, here is today’s prompt (optional, as always). Music features heavily in human rituals and celebrations. We play music at parties; we play it in parades, and at weddings. In her poem, OBIT [Music], Victoria Chang describes the role that music played in her mother’s funeral. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that involves music at a ceremony or event of some kind.
Happy, or at the very least, meaningful, writing!
When the Drums Wept
In the crumbling church by the mango tree,
the drums began before the priest could speak.
They beat the drums in mockery of the old oaths,
each strike a curse hurled at an almost-forgotten dictator.
Not an organ, not a hymn,
but a pulse, fierce and rib-shaking,
a heartbeat the sky itself leaned in to hear.
Grandmother clutched her beads,
her hands trembling like old paper.
She spat once into the dust,
a blessing or a curse, no one could tell.
The crows on the steeple bowed their heads,
and the wind stitched shut its traitor’s mouth.
Torches bloomed among the ruins,
and the smoke braided itself into the stars.
Wild vines clutched the broken stone,
spelling prayers in a language older than stories.
Music: raw, ruthless;
spilled out into the courtyard like black oil,
slicking the steps, the flowers, the open graves.
It was a funeral, yes,
but it was also an uprising.
A remembering.
A reminder.
A refusal.
The children tore down the tattered banners,
scattering ashes over polished graves,
beating the drums until their palms tore,
laughing the way prisoners laugh when the gates fall.
The dead listened.
The living danced.
And no one,
no one:
Bowed.
They danced not for the gods,
but against them.
They tore the gold crosses from the crumbled altar,
hammered their fists against the tombstones
until the stone wept dust.
They spat verses backward,
draped broken banners over the priest’s abandoned robes,
and danced on the bones of kings.
Not to the priest,
not to the polished marble tombs,
not to the faded flags in the rafters.
Because in that moment,
every ache, every stolen hymn, every broken promise,
was dragged into the open and made to bleed.
And when the music finally died,
when the last drum split its skin with one exhausted sigh,
it was not silence that followed.
It was the birth of a future they had been denied.
The crows took flight.
The earth sighed open.
And from the wreck of the old temple,
something unholy and beautiful
clawed and crowned with rust,
began to grow,
writhing its way upward like a fierce garden,
thorned with old prayers,
howling its name in a tongue no priest could bless.
- Oizys.
A powerful poem, Oizys, these lines especially:
ReplyDelete‘Not an organ, not a hymn,
but a pulse, fierce and rib-shaking,
a heartbeat the sky itself leaned in to hear’
and
‘Music: raw, ruthless;
spilled out into the courtyard like black oil,
slicking the steps, the flowers, the open graves.’
Kim, thank you deeply for this. "A heartbeat the sky leaned in to hear" is something I was hazy about while writing but it felt like the kind of grief that I was feeling. I'm so, so glad they resonated with you. Your comment made me feel seen. Thank you again.
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