Beautiful poem

April is National Poetry Month (hooray!), which means the country’s various Poet Laureates will be holding a few more events than usual and schoolchildren are doing poetry units in their English or language arts classes. Besides that, I’m not quite sure what National Poetry Month has in store for people who aren’t tapped into poetry social networks, but I hope all of you celebrate by buying a book of poetry (by a living poet, preferably!) — nothing looks better on a bedside table.

For those of us who are part of the “poetry world,” it’s hard to miss the National Poetry Writing Month challenge, or NaPoWriMo, where poets are asked to write a new poem for each one of the month’s thirty days. Some think this is a bad idea, and there’s something to be said for the thought that constantly drafting new material isn’t an ideal poetry practice. But, at least a week in, I’ve been giving it a shot. Are any of you?

In order to facilitate this writing barrage, I think a lot of people appreciate some structure, like poet Taylor Byas’ list of forms and prompts, or the “official” NaPoWriMo site, which has its own series of daily prompts. I haven’t been following any prompts or forms, preferring to write whatever bubbles up, but I’m considering leaning on these generative lists in the weeks to come.

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Today I’m sharing my draft from April 2, which is the best of the bunch so far. It’s a real swerve away from how I’ve been writing recently, in subject matter and tone, but I really like how it turned out.

It’s a beautiful poem.

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Beautiful poem


I want to write a beautiful poem
like the ones I keep reading, 
where a shimmer of vivid light dies
in the iris of a friend or a lover
[it doesn’t matter which] and sets fire
to the ring around their wolf-eyes,
as what’s left of the flush of the evening 
pours across their face, glowing them
caramel and ochre and bronze. 
In this beautiful poem, there’s water
somewhere in the middle distance
and it’s blushing even brighter than
our skin, but we can’t reach it
because desire is more lovely 
than fulfillment. And we’re in a car,
because we’re going somewhere,
somewhere becoming, somewhere
that is not here with its rain and
its cold faces and the charges
that tether us so completely 
that we never leave, except 
in beautiful poems. And we’re driving 
fast now, windows down and your arm 
is on my knee and you’re you now 
instead of another them and neither of us 
is driving but the car is still moving,
knifing through the thickening night,
because it’s a poem and in a poem
you can do literally whatever you want.
Like be beautiful, even though you don’t
believe it. Like moving without sound.

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