NaPoWriMo 2026 [31st March: Early-Bird Prompt] - Receipt, or Something Like It

NaPoWriMo 2026 [31st March: Early-Bird Prompt] 

Get set...

It’s March 31, or as we like to call with around here, Na/GloPoWriMo Eve. A time when poetic spirits haunt the land, preparing for their month of fun…

Tomorrow, we’ll have for you our first daily resource and featured participant, as well as a daily prompt. In the meantime, here’s an early-bird prompt for those of you whose geographic relationship with the international date line means that April 1 arrives a bit earlier than it does at National/Global Poetry Writing Month HQ.

Start by reading Katie Naughton’s poem, “Debt Ritual: Oysters.” Now, write your own poem in which you refer to a specific writer or artist (or work of literature/art) and make a declarative statement about want or desire. Set the poem in a particular, people-filled place, like a restaurant, bus station, museum, school, etc.

Happy writing!

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Note: I almost did not write today. But that seems to be the theme lately. Almost doing things, almost showing up, almost being present, almost doing it. So I am interrupting that pattern, even if only slightly. This is for the early-bird prompt.

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Receipt, or Something Like It

At a small restaurant
with metal tables that remember too many elbows,
I sit across from conversations that are not mine.

Plates arrive, leave, return half-eaten—
like decisions people could not fully commit to.

Someone laughs too loudly behind me.
Someone is breaking up near the window.
The waiter writes quickly,
as if speed could prevent anything from spilling over.

I think of Sylvia Plath,
and how she made even hunger sound precise.

I wanted that.
As a child.

Not the tragedy.
Not the spectacle people romanticize afterwards.
But the sharpness.

I wanted language that did not hesitate.
I wanted to say what I mean
before it rot inside me.

The spoon hits the glass beside me;
a small, accidental declaration.

I wanted to respond on time.

Not hours later,
not days later,
not in the quiet safety of a page,

but there,
in the moment the boundary is crossed.

At the next table,
someone says “it’s not that serious,”
and everyone nods like agreement is easier than truth.

I wanted to disagree.

The bill arrives.
Numbers arranged neatly
as if everything can be accounted for.

But there is always something unpaid,
something carried out
without being written down.

I leave before finishing my food.

I want to stop leaving things unfinished.

Outside,
the evening is loud with people
who seem to know exactly where they are going.

I stand there for a moment longer than necessary.

I want to belong to my own decisions.

And for once,
I do not take that statement back.

~ Oizys.