Day Twenty-Five on APRIL 25, 2024

Welcome back, all, for the twenty-fifth day of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo.

Today, our featured participant is Wind Rush, which brings us an intriguing meditation on wholeness
and brokenness in response to Day 24’s first-line prompt.

Our featured resource for the day is the website of the Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion project,
which places posters with poems on them into the transit systems of major American cities.

Last but not least, here’s our optional prompt for the day. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a
poem based on the “Proust Questionnaire,” a set of questions drawn from Victorian-era parlor games,
and adapted by modern interviewers. You could choose to answer the whole questionnaire, and then
write a poem based on your answers, answer just a few, or just write a poem that’s based on the
questions. You could even write a poem in the form of an entirely new Proust Questionnaire. We
have a fairly standard, 35-question version of the questionnaire laid out for you below.

Happy writing! Please click – Day Twenty-Five – for the long list.

After All, 

Out walking the dog around an unfamiliar city
I saw a silent gaggle of couples sitting at round
tables and thought with nostalgia of happy hour.
Do they still call it happy hour? Well—I’m old, and
that’s the episode I interject about here.

I saw couples out for happy hour together but
suspended by the modern pretext of hanging out.
Together, holding physical space at the table but
fully engaged elsewhere, and smiling into handheld
devices. Consuming drinks and fingering rations
into their mouths—Modern Prometheus style—

together but indifferent, and like Frankenstein’s monster,
gaining a better understanding of the world and how it
functions. And I knew: on this night they’ll bed together,
under the guise of drunkenness; when daylight finds them,
none will remember how they spent the night together.

Or will they? Because after all, to live like this takes sacrifice:
a little strident but very deadening. After all, no one has the
time or inclination to think of togetherness ambivalently.
After all, familial responsibility and what folks owe to each
other is nobody’s problem. And romance? Romance is just
a misleading fabrication of the past. Questionable.

© selma

—I took a nap this afternoon.
This poem was born from a dream…

…Thanks for your presence…
For being here, and supporting me as I worked on these first drafts.
It’s been truly amazing!!
Thanks, Maureen.

Happy last days of NaPoWriMo 2024.
God willing, I’ll see you all here again next year.

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Selma Martin

I’m a simple woman who dares to see the beauty in ordinary. I’d love to connect with you and like pen pals, I want something beautiful to blossom between us. Will you join me? Selma is my middle name. Its meaning—peaceful, complete, are euphoric affirmations I like to think of myself as having. They compliment the joy I feel when I write. I sincerely hope you decide to join me on my writing journey. I Wish You Miracles.

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