NaPoWriMo 2026 [April 22]
Day Twenty-Two
Happy Wednesday, everybody, and welcome back for Day 22 of Na/GloPoWriMo.
Our featured participant for the day is 7eyedwonder, where the response to Day 21’s names-and-nicknames prompt brings us a lovely riff on the on the Shakespearean phrase, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Today’s resource is The Kelly Writers House’s system of online book groups. At any given time, the Philadelpia-based center has a number of different book/discussion groups going on, and all you need to participate is an email address and a willingness to engage in a discussion of a specific group’s chosen book or set of poems.
And now for our (optional) prompt! Jaswinder Bolina’s poem “Mood Ring” imagines the speaker as both himself and an interior being (who happens to take the form of a small donkey). It’s quite silly . . . and not silly at the same time. A sort of “serious fun.” Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which the speaker is in dialogue with him or herself.
Happy writing!
-
Internal Affairs
There are two of us in here.
This is already a problem.
—
“I think we should begin calmly,” I say,
like someone who has never once
been calm.
She laughs.
Not kindly.
—
You always do this, she says.
You make a structure
and then you live inside it
like it’s not a cage.
It’s not a cage, I say.
It’s a form.
Oh, she says.
Does it open?
—
We sit with that.
Or rather, I sit.
She paces.
She has always been better
with movement.
—
What do you want, I ask her.
She says: not this.
Which is not helpful.
Which is extremely accurate.
—
You wanted to be good, she reminds me.
You wanted to be chosen.
You wanted:
I know what I wanted, I snap,
too quickly.
She raises an eyebrow I cannot see
but feel.
—
There are things you say in poems,
she continues,
that you do not permit in life.
That’s called craft, I say.
That’s called fear, she says.
—
We take a break from each other
by not speaking.
It does not work.
—
At some point, I try to reason with her.
If we fall apart, I say,
who exactly is supposed to write about it?
She considers this.
Then, annoyingly, smiles.
Oh, she says.
I’m not interested in writing about it.
I’m interested in it happening.
—
This is where she becomes dangerous.
This is where I become careful.
—
You think survival is a virtue, she says.
It is, I say.
It’s also a habit, she says.
And not all habits are holy.
—
I do not have a response prepared for that.
This irritates me.
—
Fine, I say. What do you suggest?
She leans in,
closer than I like.
Something small, she says.
Something irreversible.
—
Like what?
She shrugs.
Say the wrong thing.
Refuse something easy.
Stop being impressive.
—
I laugh.
Genuinely.
You’re asking for chaos, I say.
No, she says.
I’m asking for honesty
without rehearsal.
—
We are quiet again.
Which is worse than the arguing.
—
In the end, we compromise.
Which is to say,
I write this down.
And she lets me.
For now.
—
But as I finish, she says;
softly, almost politely:
This is still you controlling the narrative.
—
I don’t answer.
I don’t know if I can.
—
Tomorrow, she says,
we try it my way.
~ Oizys.