NaPoWriMo 2026 [April 6] - Monday, with Government Weather

NaPoWriMo 2026 [April 6]

Day Six

Well, if it’s got to be Monday, at least it’s a Monday during Na/GloPoWriMo, so the work-week can start off with a bountiful crop of poems!

Our featured participant today is alex innocent, who reminds us that sometimes “less is more” with his very short, pointed response to Day Five’s things-I-dislike prompt.

Our daily resource is Nobel-winning poet Louise Glück’s essay, “Against Sincerity.” Here, Glück muses on the difference between honesty and truth, and how, in poetry, words that ring true are not necessarily those that are “honest” in the sense of recounting events as they happened. After all, a poem isn’t a newspaper article. Making art means selecting, trimming, choosing, exaggerating, and even deceiving, all in service of a goal that differs from a bare recitation of facts.

And now, to put theory in our practice, here’s our optional prompt! This one takes its inspiration from Yentl van Stokkum’s poem, “It’s the Warmest Summer on Record Babe,” which blends casual, almost blasé phrasing with surreal events like getting advice from a bumblebee. In your poem today, try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream.

Happy writing!

-

Monday, with Government Weather

I was just trying to make tea, honestly,
nothing mythic about it,
the kettle had already begun its small complaint
and Monday was sitting on my shoulders
like an unpaid bill.

Then a bumblebee came in through the window
and landed on the rim of the sugar jar
like it paid rent here.

It looked at me for a long second,
the way old women do
before saying something that ruins your week,
and said,
you keep rehearsing escape
like it’s a train timetable.

I said, sorry?
because what else do you say
when an insect enters your kitchen
already disappointed in you.

Outside, the sky had that boiled-grey look
it gets before rain,
and the wind, as usual,
seemed to be keeping receipts.

Somewhere in it,
summer called me by my old name
like it still expected an answer.

And the clothes on the line
were twisting slowly
like they were trying to become ghosts.

The bee cleaned its legs,
completely at ease.
You think elsewhere is a country, it said,
but sometimes it is only a room
where nobody has called your name incorrectly.

I wanted to argue with that,
but the spoon in my hand
had gone warm as a pulse,
and from the hallway
I could hear the house breathing
in its usual difficult way.

Somewhere inside it,
my depression was moving furniture around again.

In the kitchen,
the sink started remembering names
I had spent years trying not to answer to.

My anxiety, meanwhile,
had somehow acquired a government ID
and was moving through the house
with official permission
with the confidence of something
licensed to govern me
as if my fear had finally been recognized
by the proper authorities.

From the other room,
my mother’s bangles began speaking
in another language:
sharp, glassy, impossible to translate,
though my body understood every word.

Then, as casually as bad news,
the staircase lengthened.

Not a metaphor.
Actually lengthened.
One more step, then another,
then seven more for every year
I had spent wanting to leave.

At the top of it
was the city I almost moved to,
all dim balconies, wet pavements,
and a life that looked possible from far away.

In my hand,
my passport bloomed like a flower
and then rotted there,
petal by petal,
as if even paper knew
how long I had rehearsed leaving.

And above it,
a cloud opened like a drawer
and all my abandoned drafts fell out,
fluttering through the street
like failed instructions.

And in it
stood a girl wearing my face
more successfully than I ever had.

She looked well-rested.
I hated her immediately.

The bee said,
that’s not her fault.

Rain began without commitment,
just a few drops rehearsing tragedy
on the windowsill,
then more of it,
as if the rain had notes 
on how I was handling my life.

Somewhere above all that,
the moon texted, "u up?"
in the tone of someone
who already knew the answer.

The girl at the top of the stairs
waved like we had met before,
which, in a way, we had.
I have been building her for years
out of refusal and stationery
and all the dresses I never bought
as if every missed bus in my life
had gone on without me
toward some unlived district of myself.

The kettle screamed.
The bee flew off.
The staircase snapped back into itself.

My tea tasted faintly of thunder.

Anyway,
Monday went on.

~ Oizys.