“To Plant Words, Not Seeds”: Four Poems for National/Global Poetry Month

We’re already a few days into April, which marks National/Global Poetry Writing Month in North America and beyond. To help us get into that special NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo mood, here are four poems we’ve recently discovered and loved.

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Miri Elm, “I Want to Be Like Water”

I want to be like water.

Water has a quiet power, an ever-realized presence, a sound with no force, an ability to move and be solid.

If I could be water I would slide through your cracks, inhibit your crevices and then become solid within them.

I would vaporize so that you could breathe me in and taste my smoke.

But

I can’t manipulate water; I am not graceful or flowing.

I am made of flesh and bone that refuses to adapt, refuses to recreate itself.

No matter how much I want it to.

Visit A Short Conversation to read the rest of Miri Elm’s poem.

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Thinking about participating in NaPoWriMo? If you need a little push, use our Daily Prompts as starting points for your poems.

Christy Bharath, “Birds Are Not Musicians; They Are Songs”

White-Throated Kingfishers sound like a jackhammer in the hands of a jazz drummer. Asian Koels can be mistaken for star-crossed Shakespearean strangers cooing goodbye one last time. Black-Winged Kites shriek as though they are auditioning for musical satires. If the world was any crueler, music labels would hire poachers to hunt down Malabar Hornbills, and steal their summer playlists.

The most beautiful bird call I have ever heard belongs to a whistler in an electric blue coat. Found in the Western Ghats, it is the Beethoven of alarm clocks.

Read the rest of this prose poem over at verseherder, the blog of South India-based writer and bird-lover Christy Bharath.

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Liza Flum, “Look”

The page: a body
is this, a body is that.
The threat: internal

and opaque. This might mean
the girl is external to everything.
Mirrors double the quick

movement. Impossible pleasure—
to picture her own closed eyes.
A mask of lack: the nose missing

and sharp contours. What double
skin is this? The monster
hands her a daisy,

and she takes it into
her mouth. The monster likes
to see her well-fed.

Head to heavy feather review to explore a collection of five poems by Liza Flum — and browse the site for other poets’ work.

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Carolin Messier, “A Recipe for Writing Poetry”

As I roll the pin
across the fifth crust
of buttery dough
to fill fluted pans from France,
my fingers itch
to grasp instead
a pencil
to plant words, not seeds
upon a page
to capture and preserve
the thoughts and remembrances
that waft to the surface
with the steam of rosemary tea.

Writer/pastry chef Carolin Messier reflects on the similarities and differences between poetry and baking — read the rest of her poem on Writes with Pencils.

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Did the selection whet your appetite for more verse? Browse our poetry archives for other poems and experimental writing, or follow the NaPoWriMo tag in the Reader to explore a steady stream of new work.