Category: Part and Poetry

{pf: npm ’26 • poetry peeps engage the ekphrastic}

by

April 24, 2026

12:28 pm

14 Comments on {pf: npm ’26 • poetry peeps engage the ekphrastic}

Musings on Extemporanea, NPM, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

Welcome to another Poetry Friday Adventure!


Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our poetry challenge for the month of MAY.

Here’s the scoop: we’re having a Poetry Potluck. In the spirit of sharing a plate of poetry together, we invite you to grab a form you like, season it to your taste, and share it with us and all of your Poetry Peeps – it’s a good time for all of us to remember what we’ve learned, and to celebrate. Are you in? Good! You’ll have the month to craft your creation and share it May 29th in a blog post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope you’ll bring a dish!

From Process…

Happy National Poetry Month, Poetry Friends! Ekphrastic poetry is one of my favorite, favorite forms, simply because I am an avid photographer, using my phone far more often for its photo capabilities than its ability to connect me to anyone else. I have been mildly obsessed with Springtime in the garden of this house, as come May we’ll have been here for one year, and we’re still in the “discovery” phase. Did we know we had daffodils? Nope, not until they started showing up. Ditto for the hyacinths. Now I’ve found my new best love – bearded irises. I’m entranced.

…to Poetry

Today the Poetry Seven are also poem-ing in honor of a birthday! My NPM project is daily tricubes along with Very Bad Drawings (TM), but in the spirit of wanting to bring a gift to my friend, I’ll spare our birthday girl my artwork and share a recent garden snap instead. Happy Birthday to Sara Lewis Holmes, who is a bright spark, shining undiminished even in darkness – living aglow not “in spite of” but living into her Because. Farsee-er, questioner, somesuch-er, friend – may you continue to live all the days of your life. Love you, Sara.

iris awake

awaiting
its moment
through chill dark

comes beauty,
arriving
with the sun

breathtaking –
no shrinking
violet.

My Poetry Sisters are much more on top of things this month, engaging the ekphrastic in their own ways. Liz’s poem is here. Laura’s poem is here, Cousin Mary Lee’s is here, and Sara’s poem is here. Tricia’s poem is here, and Karen’s poem is here. Michelle K’s poem is here. Carol V’s poem is a puff of dandelion here, and Jill’s poem is here – welcome Jill! Margaret’s cypress poem is here. More Peeps may show up throughout the weekend, so don’t forget to check back to see their links rounded up here.

Our lovely hostess this Poetry Friday is Irene – and Emily Dickinson – so don’t miss stopping by for more poetry, and thank-you, Irene, for hosting.

In the chaos of life bursting into being, change insisting on its way, and finally a little sun, some things remain the same – unchanged despite our desire or efforts. Some things have also remained the same in spite of us – which is a bit of joy in the tangle. I hope this season reminds you to look for what is unfolding beautifully along with what is unfolding chaotically. Take deep breaths, and walk with measured steps. Life is change – and chaos – but I hope that today especially that you can be a calm in your own storm. Remember that you are well-loved.

{npm ’26 • 23}

by

April 23, 2026

11:50 am

2 Comments on {npm ’26 • 23}

NPM, Part and Poetry

Providentially, one of the very best purchases we made, just before the pandemic dropped, was a plug-and-play hot tub. Himself had been ill and had to take a leave of absence from work, and the whole thing – being sick and caretaking – was exhausting. We were living in a very vertical townhouse with all the modern conveniences, and a distinct lack of decent bathtubs (classy showers, though). After five years in Scotland, we are very DEFINITELY bathtub people, going so far, when we lived there, as to take baths in the old Turkish-style bath houses at the council (neighborhood) pool. Endless hot water and tubs six feet long and deep enough to drown in (people did laundry in them back in the 50’s, we were told) were amazing. Even better, the bathhouse was built in 1871 and some of the old tilework is gorgeous.

Bafflingly, I somehow grew up in a family who seemed to see baths as unnecessary. Hedonistic nonsense – my parents and siblings are showers all the way – but give me a good soak and a book and quiet. When we put the hot tub in the garage (yes, in the garage. I can’t control outdoors, I control indoors) it turned out to be one of our Best Things Ever.

Bathhouse

Prehistoric
kindling:
Fires beget

heated foot,
then hot drinks.
Interval

between spark
and hot baths?
Ephemeral.

{npm ’26 • 22}

by

April 22, 2026

1:33 pm

3 Comments on {npm ’26 • 22}

NPM, Part and Poetry, Soapbox

(NB:if you’re not in a good place mentally, please come visit tomorrow.)

Earlier this year, the local brew pub/movie theater in the next town over showed the Oscar-nominated short films. I didn’t check the listens carefully, merely going along with a friend (NEVER. AGAIN.), and we ended up seeing the year’s nominated documentary shorts. We went out expecting Pixar. We got inhumanity piled to infinity. Five films, but it took weeks to breathe past the shadow of their hollow grief.

One of the short films was called Were And Are Gone, about silent protestors in Tel Aviv protesting the genocide against Palestine by simply holding up the pictures of the twenty-five thousand children who had died with the words “Was And Is No More.” Though of course there was some thoughtful response, mostly it was brutal, to state it mildly, as the reality of the war was held up against the Tel-Avivian-on-the-street, whose indifference, abuse – psychological, verbal, and sometimes physical, as they were spit upon – and disgust at the protestors was…so hard to see. The film begins with the protestors working on posters, and then an air raid siren goes off, and still chit-chatting, they head casually to the cement reinforced stairwell of the apartment building. And there was just something so WWII about it – but something not. My temperament and my brain chemistry don’t allow me to stare into the Abyss frequently – it’s always looking back – but…sometimes I wonder how long. How long can we possibly go on like this. How long it will be allowed – by anyone.

Russia’s abuse of Ukraine has been going on, intermittently, since the Second World War, making it currently Europe’s longest running war. Israel has been trying to eradicate Palestine for nearly that long. Myanmar, Sudan, Pakistan, and now this foolish aggression against Iran. How. Freaking. Long.

Year…Fiftysomething of the War

Constantly
resounding,
the sirens

scream, “air raid!
disaster!”
At some point

panic palls.
The bombs fall
anyway.

{npm ’26 • 21}

by

April 21, 2026

3:42 pm

2 Comments on {npm ’26 • 21}

NPM, Part and Poetry, Sleeper Stories, Small Fictions


This morning in the bathroom, I realized that both the showers are glassed in, thus constituting “windows,” thus technically coming under my wholly arbitrary ‘windows’ poetry rule… And now you’ll be tormented with my “shower thoughts” for the rest of the month, you’re welcome.

So, I don’t know if it’s a Spring thing or if there’s some other denom-specific significant thing I’m missing, but the Presbyterians are having baby baptisms frequently these days. And each time a baby objects to the whole… thing, the parents look like they want to sink through the floor. And I just want to call down from the choir loft and say, “HEY! Tell them they’re doing great!” Because honestly? If a random smiley man said some stuff to me I didn’t understand and then caressed my nearly bald head with water which is probably at best tepid? You’d better believe I’d let him know my thoughts on the matter. Loudly.

(TANGENT: does anyone remember the water gun christenings and Easter …Holy Water spritzing of 2020? The babies were perhaps even more offended then [or just confused]). Mind you, I’m wholly and deliberately missing the point, but dang it, babies should react negatively at the wildly strange interaction that is infant baptism. It’s an important survival reflex. The kids are all right.

Early Displays of Common Sense

Prudently,
baptisms
involve tears.

An infant’s
instinctive
rejection:

NO STRANGERS
WITH WATER!!!
(Good job, kid.)

{npm ’26 • 20}

by

April 20, 2026

11:10 am

2 Comments on {npm ’26 • 20}

Mental Health, Mi Familia Loca, NPM, Part and Poetry, Sleeper Stories

This week we have arrived at the portion of the NPM celebration wherein I acknowledge that I will be so glad when it’s May. Not because I can’t write a daily poem – I can, and probably should. Not because I can’t draw a daily doodle, either, though these images are only just now becoming the shorter, quick-sketch thing they were meant to be from the beginning, with fewer attempts at a photo-realistic literal and more impressionistic and observational within a metaphorical window… but because I always (always, always) set myself some project expectation that I absolutely struggle to complete. While the poems are moving from externally observant and becoming more internal, I’m finding that the form is inhibiting me – though this was a deliberate choice. Tricubes are meant for brevity, after all, and this is a process to teach myself to lean into that – but it’s just… hard. Normally I use poetry to process. Often there’s more I want to say, but it feels like dwelling – and I’m not going to change forms, though I feel the desire. Additionally, I DO have other things to do…

swinging bridge

between now
and back then,
a crevasse:

dear parents,
leave something:
some kindness –

memories
of soft hands
as a bridge.

Poetic addendum: Saw family this weekend. People of color who experienced physical ‘correction’ have a number of people telling them that culturally this is ‘necessary’ or ‘just how it is,’ or any number nonsensical things. I think there’s a part of us that goes cold and doesn’t recover, and when the punishing parent is approaching their four-score and whatever, and you still don’t feel safe to be familiar with them… what has the ‘culture’ done? What have we normalized? What is the profit…?

hourglass
avalanche
forces hands –

we can’t hold
time’s passage:
sand’s slipping.

leave something –
in loving
memory.

I guess a double tricube could be a new form?

{npm ’26 • 18}

by

April 18, 2026

3:38 pm

2 Comments on {npm ’26 • 18}

NPM, Part and Poetry

I really adore the alligator lizards who, for whatever reason, really find a lot of enjoyment in hanging out looking at our windows… looking in and wondering how we can possibly spend so much time indoors, no doubt.

Mr. Darcy Returns

Revisit!
A small friend
came over –

Introduced
last summer,
he’s polite

mindfully
visiting
the neighbors.


{npm ’26 • 17}

by

April 17, 2026

10:58 am

2 Comments on {npm ’26 • 17}

NPM, Part and Poetry

Inevitable, that we begin to circle the idea of windows as having two sides – the ones we look out of, and the ones behind which we cannot see. I like how eyes are both useful to see things, and useful to see things from only the point of view of the watcher – a view defined and interpreted myriad ways.

look

called “windows
of the soul,”
perspective

imagines
internal
narratives –

life observed,
translated,
redefined.

{npm ’26 • 16}

by

April 16, 2026

1:08 pm

3 Comments on {npm ’26 • 16}

NPM, Part and Poetry, Sleeper Stories


We’ve reached the halfway point of the month, and the location of a new window that really isn’t a window, exactly. I mean, it’s a screen. We were always going to have to get to the screens.

As a person who lived through the moral panic of video games as a child and then a teacher, and who is living with everyone else through the genuine cause-and-effect panic that is the morally bankrupt application of uncontrolled AI, this too-much-this-or-that in terms of digital interaction has solidified into the realization that forevermore, It’s Always Going to Be Something. People will always be upset about that which doesn’t fit within their parameters of societal or personal behavior or expectation. Even before screens, and reading on screens, my father sought to eradicate my predilection towards bookishness – without his control over the characters in the books nor over my thoughts about their actions or words or what I was learning from them, the contents of my mind must have felt chaotic, untrammeled, and wholly out of his reach… just like an individual’s thoughts ought to be.

May we guard the freedom to read forever.

avoid, escape, iterate

what mattered
was distance:
diminished

consciousness
receding
present, past –

the future
replete with
evasions.