Day Twenty-Eight

Happy 28th! Day of NaPoWriMo and GloPoWriMo, everyone. Including today, we’ve just got three days left. If you’ve kept up all this time – kudos!

Our featured participant today is erbiage, where the long-lined poem for Day 27 is a wonderfully claustrophobic account of a data center.

Today’s poet in translation is Brazil’s Marcio-Andre, who is also a visual and sound artist. The lines of his poems are spaced across the page, forcing the reader’s eye to jump restlessly from place to place, while providing a visual sense of airy openness. You can find fourteen of his poems at the link above.

And now, for our prompt (optional, as always). Today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that tells a story. But here’s the twist – the story should be told backwards. The first line should say what happened last, and work its way through the past until you get to the beginning. Now, the story doesn’t have to be complicated (it’s probably better if it isn’t)! Here’s a little example I just made up:

The Story of a Day

She lay her head down on the table.
She climbed the stairs to her room and sat down.
The afternoon of the boarding house was cool and dusty.
She walked home slowly, watching the sun settle on brick walls and half-kept gardens.
Work lasted many hours. Office lights buzzing with a faint, mad hum.
Breakfast was a small miracle.
She thought it a wonder, as always, that she’d woken up at all.

Well, that’s kind of unsettling! But I think it works as a poem. Maybe you’ll have better luck working backwards toward a happy beginning. Happy writing!