NaPoWriMo 2026 [3rd April] - The Cartographer Who Leaves Things Out

NaPoWriMo 2026 [3rd April]

Day Three

Happy Friday, everyone, and happy third day of National/Global Poetry Writing month.

Today, our featured participant is Eden Ligon, whose response to Day Two’s prompt about childhood and growing up is both sweet and bittersweet.

Our resource today is the University of Pennsylvania’s free, online class on Modern & Contemporary Poetics. In this go-at-your-own-pace course, instructor Al Fireis takes you from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman up to the more-or-less present day, with stops along the way to see the sights and sounds of the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat poets, the L=A-N=G=U=A=G=E poetry movement, and more.

And now, last but not least, here is today’s optional prompt. In his poem, “Treasure Hunt,” Prabodh Parikh brings us a refreshingly different view of what being a poet is like – that is, if you grew up on the cultural notion of poets being wan and ethereal, or ill and doomed. Parikh’s boisterous pirate of a poet might be an “unreliable” character, but seems like he’d be the life of any party, and quite satisfied with his existence. Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is considered to be. Perhaps your poem will feature a very relaxed brain surgeon, or a farmer that hates vegetables. Or maybe you have a poetical alter-ego of your own, who flies a non-wan, treasure-hunting flag with pride.

Happy writing!

-

The Cartographer Who Leaves Things Out

I draw maps for a living.

Clean lines,
careful borders,
rivers that know where they are going,
colors that do not bleed.

I am trusted
to make the world legible,
to keep it still.

There are rules:
label the capitals,
trace the highways,
leave nothing important unnamed,
avoid unnecessary detail.

Especially that.

I follow most of them.

But some places
refuse to sit still on paper.

Some areas arrive
already simplified...

no names,
just coordinates
and a quiet instruction
to leave them as they are.

Temporary, I am told.

Pending clarity.

A street that no longer exists
but is still remembered.

A coastline that shifts
depending on who is speaking.

A region
where the names have been erased
and rewritten
so many times
they no longer sound like words.

These I soften.

These I leave blank,
or mark
with something approximate.

It is easier this way.

On certain days,
the data comes in late,

numbers without context,
sudden absences
where something used to be.

A town reduced
to a blank space
that aligns too neatly
with nothing at all.

I mark it
with a neutral shade.

It looks clean.

It always does.

There are places
that flicker in and out
depending on the version,

present in one file,
missing in the next,
as if existence itself
were under review.

I do not ask.

The legend
does not account for this.

It explains rivers,
elevation,
boundaries agreed upon.

It does not explain
why some regions
must remain quiet.

People prefer maps
that do not tremble.

Maps that do not suggest
that something is happening
just beyond the edge
of what can be printed.

People prefer maps
that do not argue with them.

Maps that do not ask
who was here before,
or where they went.

So I smooth the lines.

I adjust the scale.

I make room
for what can be shown.

And the rest:

the smoke that does not appear,
the names that no longer attach,
the places that become
before and after:

I leave out.

Not because they are small.

Because they are not.

Because if I included them,

the map
would no longer hold.

Sometimes,
I think of filling in everything:

every absence,
every silence,
every place
that has been folded out of sight.

But the page is only so large.

And clarity,
I am told,
is the point.

So I draw
what can be agreed upon.

And leave the rest
to memory,
which is less precise,
and far more dangerous.