April 1: “To Find Stars In Another Language” by Elizabeth Bradfield

April 2: “To Mercury, In Retrograde” by Randall Mann

April 3: “To Biespiel From United Flight 1037″ by David Biespiel

April 4: “Sawed-Through Link” by Marilyn Nelson

April 5: “Tar Baby” by Amaud Jamaul Johnson

April 6: “Swim Lesson No. 3″ by Wendy Willis

April 7: “Cafe Space” by James Hoch

April 8: “The American Dream Visits While I Clean” by Julie Brooks Barbour

April 9: “Stone Cold Jane” by Cornelius Eady

April 10: “Seven Confessions: A Chapbook” by Julie Sheehan

April 11: “Billy Divine” by Adam McGovern

April 12: “Feast Day” by Rita Mae Reese

April 13: “Ghosts” by Brachah Goykadosh

April 14: “Sober Lullaby” by Matthew Henriksen

April 15: “The Plagiarist” by Nicky Beer

April 16: “Darth Vader, King Laios (Fill Out Their Applications as, Across the Lobby, Genghis Khan’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” Ringtone Plays): Fathers of the Year” by Douglas Kearney

April 17: “Brandon Bryant: MQ1 Predator Sensor Operator” by Jill McDonough

April 18: “b my apocalypse” by Laura Zaylea

April 19: “The Sturdiness” by Sina Queyras

April 20: “Ruminations on cud from five of my fullest stomachs” by Matt Mauch

April 21: “Letters from Saint Francis” by Joshua Heineman

April 22: “Detonator” by Joyelle McSweeney

April 23:“Postcard to Regret” by Sean Hill

April 24: “Brother” by Melissa Broder

April 25: “Inner Flamingo” by Sandra Beasley

April 26: “but she wasn’t from my south” by Randall Horton

April 27: “Aubade With Mosquito Bites” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

April 28: “Telephone Pole” by Hadara Bar-Nadav

April 29: “The Qiana Shirt by Emilio Pucci” by Qiana Towns

April 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali

April 31: “loose strife” by Amy Quan Barry

April 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman

April 33: “__________studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen

April 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager
• National Poetry Month Day 33: “______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen
• National Poetry Month Day 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman
• National Poetry Month Day 31: “loose strife” by Quan Barry
• National Poetry Month Day 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali

P.S. If you like the work we’ve published here, check out the link at the bottom of the page for our e-anthology of the poems we published in our first three years at The Rumpus. It’s free!

Newborn

My hands beg to be freed
from this rock. God, little daughter,

arriving in waves at home.
We work together. You crown, stop.

As though I want no one
to answer, I tap the damp scalp.

How do you rest so close to the edge?
You: purple, open-mouthed.

I have nothing to coo. Cetus
Closes his teeth. I conjured him.

Your tongue stabs at the air.
O, blood at my feet, night.

Little mouth, drugged, looking to nurse
And unable to take hold.

-Deborah Ager

Deborah Ager is an author, a writer, and founder of a magazine. She’s author of Midnight Voices (2009) and co-editor of The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (2013) and Old Flame: Ten Years of 32 Poems Magazine (2012).

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 33: “______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen
• National Poetry Month Day 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman
• National Poetry Month Day 31: “loose strife” by Quan Barry
• National Poetry Month Day 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali
• National Poetry Month Day 29: “The Qiana Shirt, 1976, by Emilio Pucci” by Qiana Towns

______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote

Playing alone, the artist’s child says,

“You have snappy eyes” & at that moment

she notices her placemats: round

bamboo eyes on the stone table. Crumbs stick

in the swirls her son is sometimes mesmerized by,

like she was by the pinwheel of hair

at the center of his brown head,

black and soft as when he was born,

squalling, damp, rooting for milk. An art object

does not always do as much, as universality

(the myth) crows on old street corners

she could not have stood on untouched

in previous centuries, or now, no matter how she dresses

the natural critic, although she has ensconced herself

into a possessive luxury of mind. She buys little

but books, therefore, in the same way

assassins come to chaos neutral

-Khadijah Queen

Khadijah Queen holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She is the author of two poetry collections: Conduit (Black Goat/Akashic 2008), and Black Peculiar, which won the 2010 Noemi Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the Switchback Books Gatewood Prize.

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager
• National Poetry Month Day 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman
• National Poetry Month Day 31: “loose strife” by Quan Barry
• National Poetry Month Day 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali
• National Poetry Month Day 29: “The Qiana Shirt, 1976, by Emilio Pucci” by Qiana Towns

1. Reincarnation. 2. What is said of insanity:
expecting a different result, immortality

or keeping all your money. 3. The equation of circumference
or a wedding band. 3.1 The greatest distance between

two inseparable objects. 3.2 Contradiction in terms
of touching without contact. 4. How the oval—drunk

—circles any point dropped in its area. An egg’s sturdy shell,
suspending the yolk, obliterates at a pan’s edge. 5. Each of our skulls

firming atmospheres for our brains—the soft terrain
of what and how we know. 5.1 Craniums learn magnetism,

draw near one place then another, one person, some other.
6. Foucault’s pendulum and diligent logic. 7. Routine.

8. How we return to reinterpret love, on what we
have already settled. Our consistent change

of position. 9. Rewarding good children, destroying
the devious. 10. In the world, some never sit still, never

stay anywhere very long—history is nipping at our heels.
11. Some things are for ever; no thing ever is for some,

only one or none. 12. The way verbs swarm their noun
or share it. 11.1 Ad infinitum. There, somewhere, comes

an end, an abrupt shift toward abandonment
or disintegration. 11.2 Right now, there is everything

of the past leaning forward, like an icebreaker nudging
miles of virgin ice.

-Wesley Rothman

Wesley Rothman serves as senior poetry reader for Ploughshares, a member of Salamander’s Board of Directors, an editorial consultant for Copper Canyon Press, and was an assistant poetry editor for Narrative. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee and finalist for the 49th Parallel, McCabe, and Consequence Poetry Prizes, his poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including Bellingham Review, Salamander, Rattle, Ruminate, and Newcity. He teaches writing at Emerson College and the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager
• National Poetry Month Day 33: “______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen
• National Poetry Month Day 31: “loose strife” by Quan Barry
• National Poetry Month Day 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali
• National Poetry Month Day 29: “The Qiana Shirt, 1976, by Emilio Pucci” by Qiana Towns

-Quan Barry

Born in Saigon and raised on Boston’s north shore, Quan Barry is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she recently directed the MFA Program in Creative Writing. The author of three books published by the University of Pittsburgh Press (Asylum, Controvertibles, and Water Puppets), her work has appeared in such journals as the Georgia Review, the Kenyon Review, Ms., and the New Yorker. Among her awards are an NEA Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University.

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager
• National Poetry Month Day 33: “______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen
• National Poetry Month Day 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman
• National Poetry Month Day 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali
• National Poetry Month Day 29: “The Qiana Shirt, 1976, by Emilio Pucci” by Qiana Towns

All boys want to fall
Sent like sun-thunder westward

Sense-sure and censured they twist
out of the wings fastened to their backs

itching always for more blue
suspended endlessly in space at the moment of fall

Here in the sky ward
you can count them:

Lightning-struck or hurled from heaven
Panicked or resigned,

But all heading in the blue direction,
their fathers always at a loss for words.

Here is the disobedient one who willfully jumped

And here the wild one who raced for the sun

Here is the stupid one who lost control of the horses

And here the frightened one who stowed away
on the silver boat bound for the storm.

They all raced away from rules like sea-drunk criminals
hopelessly confused about the laws of men and gods

caught by gravity, unspooling like bolts of silk across the sky
chattering on and on about infinity and eternity

the whole way down.

-Kazim Ali

Kazim Ali is a poet, essayist, fiction writer and translator.

His books include several volumes of poetry, including Sky Ward (Wesleyan University Press, 2013), The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award, The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions, 2008), and the cross-genre text Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities (Wesleyan University Press, 2009).

He is an associate professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College and teaches in the Masters of Fine Arts program of the University of Southern Maine.

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager
• National Poetry Month Day 33: “______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen
• National Poetry Month Day 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman
• National Poetry Month Day 31: “loose strife” by Quan Barry
• National Poetry Month Day 29: “The Qiana Shirt, 1976, by Emilio Pucci” by Qiana Towns

In her hair we see a psychedelic mantra
of a decade known as the We Speak
Bold-Faced Patterns epoch because names are
not unlike shirts we cover and press
the differences, a phonetic charade.
Watch how letters like collars precede
and manage dimensions, watch them march
into a history of preoccupation with self.

2.

The letter ‘q’ without ‘u’ is not unlike wolves& half-moons & coke spoons & Rick James & disco balls & Funky town & sex & healing & breath & thump, thump, thump, thump.

3.

Skin is as wide as bishop sleeves
as consumerism:
A favorite summer fabric
pelted Stochastic Moniker red.

She wants to tell you
a story about the time
she bought her name in a city
where seams show through to bone.

-Qiana Towns

Qiana Towns earned a MFA from Bowling Green State University, and a MA from Central Michigan University where she served as poetry editor for the online literary journal Temenos. Her work has appeared in Milk Money, and other literary journals. She is a Cave Canem fellow and Editor for Reverie: Midwest African American Literature.

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager
• National Poetry Month Day 33: “______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen
• National Poetry Month Day 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman
• National Poetry Month Day 31: “loose strife” by Quan Barry
• National Poetry Month Day 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali

Lightless beacon

who means the death
of green, its useless life.

Is my will to people?

Transmitting
war from house to house.

Chaos rips
through copper,

a haywire noose
tangled around my head.

I once held
the lips of a thousand

sleepy lovers
too far away to meet.

The world become
less strange.

Words for static
and soon.

Words for always
bitten in two.

Years of winter
splintered my throat.

The humming and
the humming.

Your missing
loves return to me

as ghosts with staples
in their mouths.

Drafty wings
on my wires notice me

only as a means
to solicit the sun.

When a man comes
with a drill, I am not

allowed to flinch
but the trembling

hasn’t stopped since
I was born.

-Hadara Bar-Nadav

Hadara Bar-Nadav is the author of Lullaby (with Exit Sign), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin, Runner Up for the Green Rose Prize from New Issues; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight, awarded the Margie Book Prize. Her chapbook, Show Me Yours, was awarded the 2009 Midwest Poets Series Award. She is also co-author of the best-selling textbook Writing Poems, 8th Edition. Recent awards include fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Hadara is currently Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager
• National Poetry Month Day 33: “______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen
• National Poetry Month Day 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman
• National Poetry Month Day 31: “loose strife” by Quan Barry
• National Poetry Month Day 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali

so mostly I drank water. I needed melty ice
to cool my tongue & teeth & was that hotel room

still lit this morning—lit all night long, really—
& were we really there? Bellies full of mushroom,

onion & moon. I left you before your night-blooming
jasmine crumpled like a tissue & I wonder if you heard

its velvet song as you shuffled to your car. I’m still
on the curb, a firefly’s forgotten little lamp. Or maybe

I’m the wolf spider we saw in the orchard, her back
spilling over with her tiny babies. No stonefruit could

sweeten that bit of pity we both held for her
in that exact moment. How I wanted to taste your lips

right then & I know there will be delicious days
I don’t think of you but days I do will be full

of thorn & honey locust. How to say it? How to
pray it? I press the still-warm welts on my legs—

the last ones of summer—to feel their secret heats,
each bite a tender reminder to never return.

-Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, Lucky Fish (Tupelo Press). She is associate professor of English at SUNY-Fredonia and teaches in the low-res MFA Program at Pacific University.

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager
• National Poetry Month Day 33: “______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen
• National Poetry Month Day 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman
• National Poetry Month Day 31: “loose strife” by Quan Barry
• National Poetry Month Day 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali

i’ve been trying to recall nostalgia, how
      hidden within deep memory they call it
saudade, its origin portugal, no i’ve never been
      lost to a lover, sadly misled, discarded,
all the ache inside me caged—yes i lie
      ‘tween the faded golden of yr paradoxical
sweet melancholy, eradicated, sadden
      & something vibrates this pulse, maybe
villancicos & cantigas are part of what
      i never knew lagrimas de saudade or fado
in general, the guitar i coveted twanged
      all night long, totally puzzled i am—are you
for real, about the past, i run futuristically
      to that shudder left in me, forever it is gone,
yr ghost of fatalistic moans circle my dome
      spinning, again & again i can’t lie but i am
shipwrecked, my portuguese love i drown deep
      into the mythology of you, i remain still.

-Randall Horton

Randall Horton is the recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea Gonzalez Poetry Award and most recently a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Randall is a Cave Canem Fellow, a member of the Affrilachian Poets and a member of The Symphony: The House that Etheridge Built. Randall is Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Haven. An excerpt from his memoir titled Roxbury is published by Kattywompus Press. Triquarterly/Northwestern University Press is the publisher of his latest poetry collection Pitch Dark Anarchy..

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager
• National Poetry Month Day 33: “______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen
• National Poetry Month Day 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman
• National Poetry Month Day 31: “loose strife” by Quan Barry
• National Poetry Month Day 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali