Hello, everyone, and welcome back for what I hope will be a lucky thirteenth day of NaPoWriMo.

Our featured participant today is Somewhere In-Between, where the poem for Day 13 takes us deep inside the vocabulary of cars. I have to admit, whenever anyone points out a particularly interesting car to me, my reaction is “Oh, yes, I see that one seems to have wheels, and um, yes, it drives on roads.” But as this poem shows, even though cars aren’t my thing, other people’s enthusiasm for them is genuine, and has a language of its own.

And today’s featured poetry resource is an “oldie but a goodie” – Poetry Daily. The site features a new poem each day, largely drawn from newly published books and issues of journals. It’s a great way to find new poems and poets and books!

And now for our prompt (as always, it’s optional!). In keeping with the mysterious quality of the number 13, today I challenge you to write a riddle poem. This poem should describe something without ever naming it. Perhaps each line could be a different metaphor for the same object? Maybe the title of the poem can be the “answer” to the riddle. The result could be a bit like our Day One poems of negation, but the lines don’t need to be expressed in negatives. To get you thinking, here’s one of my favorite examples of a “riddle” poem – Sylvia Plath’s “Metaphors”:

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

Happy writing!

 
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