In April we celebrate National Poetry Month (NPM) and the joy, expressiveness, and pleasure of poetry. We use this month to show appreciation to our favorite poets for the amazing poetry they have crafted for the world to see. In April, we enlighten others with how we connect to certain poems and how those poems make us feel.
May we use NPM to share and relate to others through the beauty of poetry.
As we enter this month, I am delighted to share my two all-time favorite poems! This first poem by Julian Randall helped me understand my feelings about being bi-racial. Even though it is a short poem, the words have always had an impact on me. The “two half-filled glasses” paint a picture in my mind of what it’s like coming from two different races - it’s the part of the poem that touched my heart the most. The beauty in reading poems that relate to your own life is that they make you feel less alone and help you realize there are others experiencing and thinking the same things you do.
“Sometimes being
bi-racial is to have
two half-filled
glasses and die of
thirst anyway.”
- Julian Randall
My second favorite poem is called “To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall” by Kim Addonizo. Reading this poem made me feel an instant relation to almost all of the things she listed in each stanza. It was very heartwarming to know that “joy is coming” regardless of all the unfortunate things that may occur in our lives, or more specifically “To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall.” I fell in love with this poem so much that I decided to write my own, “Parted Ways” which mirrors it but integrates my personal experience.
If you’ve let his fingers feel your skin you
watch him walk to his plane boarding finding
out he lives in a state that isn’t home in
front of the mirror you stand there bare the
image is unfamiliar to you small
pieces of glass hit the floor with blood you
know he sleeps thinking of you yet gone you
know there is no such thing as sweet as sugar if
she found out what you did her heart would break if
saying no was robbed from you that night if
his face was too angelic hiding demons a
facade of who i thought you might be yet
who you are and who you were is unknown
fading like the grandfather’s name you don’t exist
If you’ve lost someone you thought you knew maybe
I know you more than you actually do
- Nicole Favors
If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever
closed your legs to someone you loved opened
them for someone you didn’t moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why not if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming
- Kim Addonizo
Poetry isn’t simple, it’s complex, but within that complexity (I like to believe) it holds magical powers that can make us (as readers) feel like we are sitting beside the writer, experiencing each emotion they feel as well.
It has the beauty of inspiring and empowering us in our lives. NPM brings people from all different walks of life together to share meaningful poems. Let’s celebrate it as we enter the month of April. Let’s use different platforms like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook to share poems to connect with others about our feelings, emotions, and thoughts. May we celebrate poets and their craft and if you are a poet yourself, then maybe take a step in submitting a poem of yours to a magazine, or literary journal (or maybe our Poem-a-Week)!
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