April | Poetry Month | 30/30

Prompt:

So thankful that we have been writing together for 30 days! For the last prompt, we will stay grateful. Keep your list going. Choose something else from your list for another ode or love poem. How can you celebrate all and everything in your life. Thankful for this time, for this month, for poetry!

Poem 30/30 excerpt

You are brilliant wilderness

girls. You are Mars. All planets

remind me of you. Spectacular.

You write poems and dance

you wear headbands and ask

me so many questions I spin.

You make me spin with you

your love revolving. Enclosing.

April | Poetry Month | 29/30

Prompt:

We are so close to the finish line! Today, your prompt is to use a photo of yourself or someone you love - or a photo of an object. Write a poem about the photo, or in the margins of the photo. Tell the story - or speak from the perspective of the person in the photo. Write around it, to it, above it, about it. Hold it and tell the story. I am sharing a photo and poem from my daughter below: Araceli Flores, age 10.

Poem 29/30 excerpt

This photo makes my heart hurt—

 is the note I send

when my friend who has moved far

far away shares it

our kids walking home from school

before our lives rocked apart. 

April | Poetry Month | 28/30

Prompt:

Keep going! Every year, right around Day #28, I feel like I can’t write any more poems, but I do! So revisit the haiku, or the tanka, or any small poem that might get you to the finish line. There are only two more days to go. Today, I wrote about the park and getting ice cream on this 80 degree day. Keep the poems moving and flowing. Write about a moment - any moment in your day. You got this! Keep writing, keep moving, keep on! To be inspired, check out this amazing book by Richard Wright: Haiku: This Other World

Poem 28/30 excerpt

After staying at the park late

late with Spring sweat

and games of zombie crush.

Let ‘em run reckless

and a little bit wild. Stay

out later. Lean back

loose. Down two beers

when you get home

take all the breaths in

breathe all of them out.

April | Poetry Month | 27/30

Prompt:

One of my favorite prompts is to create a playlist for your life. Choose 7-10 songs that would show up for you. What do they mean for you? How have they moved you through the world? Write lines or short poems for each song and thread together to show what these songs mean and why they matter to you. Here is an example of a playlist that I created with Largehearted Boy for Blooming Fiascoes.

Poem 27/30 excerpt

Tonight—

just searching for the tender.

just reaching for the soft.

just striving for the sleep.

April | Poetry Month | 26/30

Prompt:

I love parks - all parks! Today, we celebrated a friend’s birthday in the park - complete with cheese doodles, lemonade and a massive and so delicious tres leches cake. Here is your prompt. Write about a favorite birthday party, or write about a favorite park - and maybe combine them! And be sure to check out the brilliant PUBLIC PARK zine created by Andy Powell with his beautiful poem along with beautiful photos from DFlo!

Poem 25/30 excerpt

We all love it. Tres leches from the best,

the BEST Dominican bakery on St. Nicholas

Kenya says. And we all have slices

that tumble over the paper plates.

And she hands me extra to bring home.

More for David and for us all later night.

We sing to Kamilah. The girls all cheer,

eat cheese doodles and buttered popcorn

guzzle lemonade. The whole afternoon

feels full of sugar. Whipped goodness

frosts our mouths, our masks,

the sweetness topping the day right off.

April | Poetry Month | 25/30

Prompt:

I love this poem Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye. It makes me think of all the small acts of kindness we see every day. Let’s try a poem about those moment. Sometimes I have to remind myself to watch the world and the people in it. Be witness to those moments, those small acts that shape the day.

Poem 25/30 excerpt

Every moment steadying my heart rate

Acknowledge this. Own it. You cannot

do it all, and you shouldn’t try.

It’s ok to sometimes sit

so absolutely still

time evaporates

and you are lost

to yourself

quiet

now.

April | Poetry Month | 24/30

Prompt:

It is Independent Bookstore Day and I cannot thank these generous, blooming, wonderful spaces enough. They are lifeline and buoy. LOVE them all. So much. Your prompt is to write a love letter to a place that has meaning for you. It could be a bookstore, or a restaurant or a place in nature. Why does it matter. Why does it stay, stay with you. Tell us all about it.

Poem 24/30 excerpt

a long ride on the A train

new books, old faces

but it follows me on home

April | Poetry Month | 23/30

Prompt:

Write about a weekend - any weekend. Maybe one that stays with you - a favorite. Maybe you went away from home, or rode the train or went on a road trip with friends. Maybe you stayed home the whole time and cooked for yourself. Maybe you went to a party or a friend’s house for coffee. Craft a poem that includes the whole weekend - from Friday night to Sunday night. Tell us everything that happened!

Poem 23/30 excerpt

Friday afternoon is full of hope—

and I carry that

brimming and booming inside

of me a tumble

life and possibility

each weekend an opening.

April | Poetry Month | 22/30

Prompt:

“If you had only one wish, what would it be?” Miriam Flores, age 7

That’s the whole prompt. Write about your wish. I could not choose just one, and so I wrote about so, so many.

Poem 22/30 excerpt

And I say no violence

no racism

no police

never any guns

or anything to hurt

no hurting

no hunger

no aching

no trauma

no pain

no disease

no pollution.

More poetry

more June Jordan

on the train

on the bookshelves.

More kindness

like Naomi Shihab Nye

writes. More holding.

More kisses in the dark

more sunshine

on playgrounds

more swing-sets

and bicycles.

Say more bread

for everyone

and clean oceans

and never plastic

or anything that hurts

or could hurt

or has a future

of hurting.

April | Poetry Month | 21/30

Prompt:

Go back to the page. Go back to the poems, to the artists. Study them. Watch the way they work. Create your own work. Respond. Cry out. Weep. Ache alongside. Tonight, I return to June Jordan. What are you returning to?

Poem 21/30 excerpt

proclaiming, weeping

studying, holding, shouting

releasing, being.   

April | Poetry Month | 20/30

Prompt:

Write about a time that you felt safe and whole. Write about the people that make you feel seen and heard. Write about all the communities that you belong to. Give them love. Shout them out in a poem. This excerpt is for Elma’s Heart Circle - my poetry loves. Thank you all.

Poem 20/30 excerpt

all I want to do

is write with all the women

that I love, love, love

and so that’s what we all do

collective arms for holding.

April | Poetry Month | 19/30

Prompt:

Write an advice poem to your younger self. What would you say? What should you know? Share that knowledge! Here are a couple photos of me from middle school. I have A LOT of advice that I would give to 5th and 6th grade Ellen!

Poem 19/30 excerpt

I spend all my time dreaming

out the car window. Watching the hills

of Kentucky rise up and fall.

Try to steady my heartbeat.

It’s moving too fast

I’m letting it all go.

April | Poetry Month | 18/30

Prompt:

Try out a new form today - one of my favorites - the tanka. The history and form is explained on poets.org. I love the simplicity - I love that it is a poem of longing. I like to think of them as small gifts given away to those you love. Try it out. I am including my tanka below. Would love to read yours!

Poem 18/30 excerpt

The love poem is always yours—

for David

Still longing for you

through another year of blooms

flowers peel awake

and I find myself singing

your name – my future, my love.

April Poetry Month | 17/30

Prompt:

Choose a poem that you have already written this month and remix it. Start a new poem from one of the lines in the middle. Tell it from the end to the beginning. Retell the story. Imagine it from a different perspective. Play!

Poem 17/30 excerpt

Still interested in our cheese?

is the same email I get from Murray’s in the Village.

And every single time, I want to say – yes, yes, yes!

Still and always interested in your cheese. Because

cheese means a party and some/any thing to savor.

And god knows I want to have a party! Lively alive

Prompt:

The reading continues! Choose any book off your shelf to get you writing. Turn to a page and jot down words or phrases that inspire or move you. Write a response poem, or write using those words or lines as a jump off point. Reading is always the springboard for my work. I can’t wait to hear what you are reading and the work that is coming after.

Poem 16/30 excerpt

still, still. Still

in the pandemic

& trying hard to not

forget. This moment

everything.

April | Poetry Month | 15/30

Prompt:                    

Read new poems! I am including some favorite poetry collections for young people in this post. Reading helps me to enter my creative mind, and I love poems as keys to opening up dreams, visions and new ideas. Find a new poem that you love and write a response to it. Think of your poems in conversation with each other. And let me know what you are loving to read right now!

Poem 15/30 excerpt

my eyes feel tender

watering at every turn

long to close them – still.            

April | Poetry Month | 14/30

Prompt:

All month, I have been steady on my gratitude and thankfulness in my journal. So my prompt is try it out today. Make a list of all the things you are thankful for. Large and small. Everything that pops up for you: people, food, locations, sayings, items, keepsakes - every thing that comes up for you. Write it down. Draw lines to connect your list. Do these things connect and speak to each other? Use this list to craft your poem. Have everything show up in unexpected and unique ways. Stay thankful!

Poem 14/30 excerpt

Say break wide open the stereotypes and assumptions. Go on and write about being all the parts of you that make you. And oh yeah I think. Oh yeah, oh yeah there is this. All this love on the open mic. All this laughter- all these snaps and hollers off mute. Oh yeah heart. Oh yeah lungs – wilderness of body and voice – stretching up, up, up!

April | Poetry Month | 13/30

Prompt:

Read this gorgeous and needed poem by the always phenomenal Aracelis Girmay called: You Are Who I Love. Who do you see in this poem? What stands out and moves you in this work? Take special care and notice to the world around you. Love it all. Fine beauty and tenderness and love it in all. Use this poem as inspiration, as jump off point, as encouragement to see, see!

Poem 13/30 excerpt

No sense of gravity or weight today. Just

an ache of loss. Acres of dust settling over all

and everything. This afternoon I search

the streets. Highs ending, the reckless trash

and heaps of masks covering the shine of teeth

and every bodies’ smile. But there is this. Too,

the small hands of children all over the city

reaching up to hold the hands of the people

who love them.

April | Poetry Month | 12/30

Prompt:

Teach this brilliant poem by Renée Watson: This Body. Love this poet and poem so much. Check out Renée’s work here and cannot wait to see the poems that rise up. You could use the prompts: My body…This body…My hands…What I feel…

Poem 12/30 excerpt

but I keep reading

all the traumas in the world

hold onto it all.

April | Poetry Month | 11/30

Prompt:

Consider the body. Your own and those around you. Write the body somewhere in the poem. Think of growing - scars and birth marks. Think of the way the body changes and moves. Be tender with it. Write the story of your body. Or a story of a body that you love. Hold it close in a poem.

Poem 11/30 excerpt

I want to know. Can see the trail of her body

at the bookshop. In the schoolyard, in the hills,

trailing after hillbillies. Calling herself one too.

How we were kin those winters of writing.

Reading in the chapel on campus. Stained

glass. My time there was short-lived.