National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month!

There are a few poetry writing challenges that have been floating around Instagram, so I’ve decided to try and write a short poem every day based on those prompts. It’s been a (welcome) distraction from actually writing my new book, and it’s allowed me to actually hone in on my poetry writing skills (which are currently zero to none).

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”

— Plato

One of the prompts I did said “use a newspaper, or a book, or an old journal etc. and pick out seven words. use them all in a poem.” My boyfriend picked seven words from Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy. They are:

ignominiously
unilateral
dilemma
self-determination
geopolitically
catastrophe
immemorial

My poem:

My grandfather asked, “Who’s Melissa?” on our family Zoom call.
I smiled, and my cousins laughed, and my uncle said, “Careful, Papa, this is live,”
And this is an immemorial dilemma
Of family trauma and a mother birthed and wed in
Catastrophe
And there was a unilateral determination to separate across geopolitically decided
State lines
And I haven’t spoken to my grandfather in five years.
There’s no wonder he didn’t remember my name or face
When there’s a sad self-determination of isolation,
Of ignominiously calling out across miles of regret
And broken silhouettes.

I’m still trying to figure out the way line breaks work and all that jazz, but I’m enjoying discovering poetry.