This is the fourth time we at The Rumpus have celebrated National Poetry Month by running a new, original poem by a different poet every day of April (and sometimes a little beyond). You’ll be able to keep up with every poem by following @RumpusPoetry or @The_Rumpus on Twitter, or by checking the Facebook pages for The Rumpus and Rumpus Poetry for announcements. …more

How clearly you can see some nights

So many stars like salt crystals
scattered on a tablecloth,
the seeming blankness of space, …more

Winter Lottery

In the gray, frozen months, the pack rats moved into the garage and ruined everything. …more

That Old Desire

Was a fire
licking and hot,
a red fur with blue
trim, like an Elizabethan
ruff, if a ruff could be made …more

After the Plantation Fire

We buried the bodies and danced—we had to.
Beneath the sagging porch, generators roared,

mosquitoes sated themselves on wild dogs, boats
approaching us from the river loaded with soldiers …more

into a film

a wonderful thing about philadelphia is
it’s not new york city      parts of us

are real      they stand on the ground
which is not an idea      tops of churches …more

The Mathematician

She’s taken to sleeping late.

Only recently have I come to stare
on her as phenomenon. …more

In the Pink

I walk the beach
by the Tickle Inn
and I know
that breakups suck. …more

Disappearing

I’d like to cap this pen, lock the drawers,
and take my coat off the chair. I’d stop
the clocks at half-past two, then grab my keys …more

“Thousands are gathered outside the interior ministry…”

Bloody lullabies soothe the centuries.
Can’t see the cradles for the tops of trees
but you know the rest: you can’t rest, poor babies. …more

Scissor Half

You were telling me your dream
at some point you started
just making it up …more

Ode to the Painter Ross Watson

Don’t imagine me as the woman
        who you replicated
                from the Vermeer …more

Death, Is Always

Turning my hair inside out, I only see
Emma Bee making sense of excess,
making something of it online, via high fashion,
which shouldn’t be but is,
along with every other thing,
both uber- and central- Pacific—
Turns out the world is a big one. So,
This is where I am tonight: …more

Kināyah

“[concerning] women, the sexual organs, defecation, various forms of
uncleanliness and everything which is a bad omen” –Sandra Naddaff

“when a woman desires something, no one can stop her” –The Thousand
and One Nights

her “slit”
different forms of discourse

basil of the bridges
in the interests of narrative variety …more

A Little Sign

When I was little
we ate a meal
at my great-grandmother’s farm. …more

This is the third year that The Rumpus has celebrated National Poetry Month by running a new, previously-unpublished poem every day for the month. Here’s a link to last year’s collection. We’ve solicited poems from a wide range of poets again, including new work from some of the poets who were covered in our Rumpus Poetry Book Club. We’ll update this list daily with links to the new poems, and you can also get your daily dose of Rumpus Original Poetry by following us on Twitter or liking us on Facebook.

April 1: Shane Book
April 2: Sandy Longhorn
Click more to get to the rest of the poems! …more

Our National Poetry Month project comes to an end two days after the end of the month, but we close with a special treat–a poem from the next book selection by the Rumpus Poetry Book Club, Life On Mars by Tracy K. Smith. I hope you’ve enjoyed these poems as much as I did while curating this project.

Sacrament

The women all sing when the pain is too much.

But first there is a deep despairing silence. …more

30 days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31, excepting The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month celebration, which has 32 this year. Celebrate April 31 with us by reading “Single Lane Bridge” by Johnathon Williams. And you can get links to all the poems we’ve run this month here.

Here at The Rumpus, we think it’s a little silly that National Poetry Month only has 30 days, so we extend the celebration for just a little bit longer. Welcome to April 31!

Single Lane Bridge

The dark cannot claim the water.
The moon got there first, and now

shines from the deep like a fish light
dropped from a boat. We passed here

hours ago. One does not travel
to a crossing — one does not

abandon his anniversary
bed. I left her sleeping.

The river has no right to such
stillness. I have no right

to complain. Maple leaves splay,
suspended on the surface, each

a hand waiting to close. A sound,
faint in the west, grows, draws near.

And you, my fair, my sweet unnamed:
How like you these spindling rails,

these splintered boards? Are you tired —
are you sleeping, too? Have you any idea?

–Johnathon Williams

Johnathon Williams is the editor of Linebreak and of Two Weeks, a Digital Anthology of Contemporary Poetry.

Joseph Harrington’s Things Come On was the Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection for March. You can read the Rumpus Poetry Book Club’s chat with him here and Camille Dungy’s essay on why she chose the book here

Out of Office Reply:
Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead

Scene One: The Hieros Gamos

“I am 5 cards on a stick in another state”:
the wings, like an albino cave bat’s, …more

I’m a Poet and I Don’t Know It

I am so broke
Maybe I am a poet
I wonder. …more

Casket Sharp

Your soft cough becomes prognosis. Soon,
cigarette smoke is the inkblot test of the lung. …more

The Accused Terrorist’s Wife

The house foreclosed, she’s gone
to his father’s home, carting
her things, a pair of his shoes, their only

daughter, sons. Water springs …more

In the Rafters at Birdie’s Roadhouse

504 forever. Hillbilly princess. FDNY.
For a good time a hard man is good to find.
Got nookie? Life is too short for bad moonshine. …more

Squirrel

The squirrel is in her little kitchen out by the tennis courts. The ceiling is too low for her, but that’s precisely the point. She wouldn’t want it any other way. How else to bear the peace of it, …more

Letter to the Right

I hope you never read my poems.
I do not care for the sweet wine you serve
warm from the pantry, or the email you sent
about a savior at the supermarket. …more

Familiar

It was because my
snot was frozen, it
was because you spit
out little chunks of

H & H when I made
that crack about the guy …more

Long (dragon)

Once skin teaches you body’s not to feel
with it grows to solve other problems fires
get tired of burning every bed
they’ve been in down ashes look so soft
but you would never spend the night anyhow …more

Eat the Sinew’s Disbelief

You will never be great, no shirt, no shoes,
no servitude. Just a regular Joe, Josephine
who walks around, has thoughts, and makes way
for Whitman. You’re John the Baptist,
a footnote, not your own story. …more

Not light’s version

A child from the past:

We always knew the world

would crack open like this, in our lifetime. …more