From NaPoWriMo 2025, Early Bird (March 31st): Happy final day of March, everyone! Tomorrow we launch our 22nd Na/GloPoWriMo. Wow!
As usual, we’ll feature a participant, resource, and a prompt every day. And remember – those prompts are optional. If one doesn’t pique your interest or strike your fancy, no worries! Feel free to write a poem to a theme of your own desiring – or if you’d like another source of prompts, why not check out Writer’s Digest’s annual list?
And now, here’s an early-bird prompt for those of you who want to write a poem, whether it’s April or not – and for those of you for whom it’s April already, even as poets in other places around the world are still in March.
Maybe one of the most common subjects in art is a portrait – a painting of one, singular person. Portrait poems are also very common. To get a sense of the breadth of style and form that these poems can take, take a look at Anni Liu’s prose poem, “Portrait Of,” John Yau’s, “Portrait,” and Karl Kirchwey’s “The Red Portrait.” Now try penning a portrait poem of your own. It can be a self-portrait, a portrait of someone well known to you, or even a poem inspired by an actual painted portrait. (If you’re looking for one to inspire you, why not check out the online collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery?)
Portrait of M.
She wears the world like a faded coat,
edges frayed from years of laughter,
but still, in the pockets, there’s warmth.
Her hands move like rivers—slow, sure,
the palm open to let secrets drift through.
Her eyes catch the light sideways,
like she’s not sure if she wants to be seen—
but when she does look, it’s all there,
a quiet honesty that makes the air feel safe.
Sometimes, she hums while peeling apples,
and I wonder how the sound of it
never quite escapes, lingers between us
like a memory we haven’t yet named.
- Oizys.
Monday, March 31, 2025
Saturday, March 22, 2025
scream is my father tongue.
scream is my father tongue,
a jagged thing, sharp as splinters,
rooted deep in the marrow of bloodlines
that are too loud to be silent.
It starts in the chest, reverberates in the throat—
no softening, no apology.
It is a language woven in fire,
a tongue of anger and pride,
of warmth and war,
too thick for my mouth to swallow whole.
I hear it in the rustle of my mother’s apron,
in the crackle of old radios where his voice is more than sound—
it is history, the echo of a man still trembling
in the space between words and silence.
I inherit the sharpness of it,
the unspoken weight it carries.
But what of my voice?
A river too shallow to carry the same depth.
What do I say when words feel
like stones, heavy with the past?
When his voice looms behind me,
my own too light to fill the air between us?
In the face of his storms,
I learn to speak in whispers—
quiet, careful, as if my words are fragile glass,
afraid to shatter against the roar of a history
that was never mine to tame.
It’s not rebellion, not yet.
It is distance,
a distance like a mountain between my tongue
and his.
But within me, there grows a need,
a hunger to find the language
that is uniquely mine,
not dictated by the past,
not bound to the weight of his rage or silence.
I search for a word that feels lighter,
that can glide like feathers across the skin,
that can breathe without carrying
the weight of a hundred years of wars,
of things never spoken aloud.
Some days, I feel the urge to break free—
to toss the old language aside like a garment too heavy,
too stifling.
Other days, I carry it,
wrap it tight around my chest,
like a blanket passed down from grandmother to mother to me,
uncomfortable yet familiar,
a shield in a world where my voice often feels too soft
to make a mark.
I carve my identity in fragments of language,
in words stolen from books,
in laughter shared with friends who understand
the complexity of this inheritance.
I do not discard it; I adapt it.
I twist it, bend it to fit the contours of who I am becoming,
a voice that knows when to rise
and when to rest,
a voice that is soft but not without strength.
I stand before him,
knowing that I will never be fully free
from the weight of his tongue—
but in that freedom, I find my voice.
It is my inheritance, my heritage.
Not in the scream,
but in the quiet courage to speak in a way
that belongs to no one but me.
My words are the bridge
between past and future,
silent yet singing,
a new tongue forming in the spaces
between his shout and my whisper.
a jagged thing, sharp as splinters,
rooted deep in the marrow of bloodlines
that are too loud to be silent.
It starts in the chest, reverberates in the throat—
no softening, no apology.
It is a language woven in fire,
a tongue of anger and pride,
of warmth and war,
too thick for my mouth to swallow whole.
I hear it in the rustle of my mother’s apron,
in the crackle of old radios where his voice is more than sound—
it is history, the echo of a man still trembling
in the space between words and silence.
I inherit the sharpness of it,
the unspoken weight it carries.
But what of my voice?
A river too shallow to carry the same depth.
What do I say when words feel
like stones, heavy with the past?
When his voice looms behind me,
my own too light to fill the air between us?
In the face of his storms,
I learn to speak in whispers—
quiet, careful, as if my words are fragile glass,
afraid to shatter against the roar of a history
that was never mine to tame.
It’s not rebellion, not yet.
It is distance,
a distance like a mountain between my tongue
and his.
But within me, there grows a need,
a hunger to find the language
that is uniquely mine,
not dictated by the past,
not bound to the weight of his rage or silence.
I search for a word that feels lighter,
that can glide like feathers across the skin,
that can breathe without carrying
the weight of a hundred years of wars,
of things never spoken aloud.
Some days, I feel the urge to break free—
to toss the old language aside like a garment too heavy,
too stifling.
Other days, I carry it,
wrap it tight around my chest,
like a blanket passed down from grandmother to mother to me,
uncomfortable yet familiar,
a shield in a world where my voice often feels too soft
to make a mark.
I carve my identity in fragments of language,
in words stolen from books,
in laughter shared with friends who understand
the complexity of this inheritance.
I do not discard it; I adapt it.
I twist it, bend it to fit the contours of who I am becoming,
a voice that knows when to rise
and when to rest,
a voice that is soft but not without strength.
I stand before him,
knowing that I will never be fully free
from the weight of his tongue—
but in that freedom, I find my voice.
It is my inheritance, my heritage.
Not in the scream,
but in the quiet courage to speak in a way
that belongs to no one but me.
My words are the bridge
between past and future,
silent yet singing,
a new tongue forming in the spaces
between his shout and my whisper.
- Oizys.
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