Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

The First Kiss

the first kiss was memento mori the second one aspiration the third
            audition
the fourth       a posture            the fifth a neurosis       the sixth was …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Záhrada

From the Moorish synagogue in Prague
Next to Kafka’s statue
The father wife and daughter headed to the cemetery …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

The Last Meal of the Iceman

He had eaten alpine ibex, which yields a greasy meat
            satisfying to a hunter, rich in fat that burns in the cells
Like napalm. He was dozing, his wrenched back propped
            against a boulder, when an arrowhead emerged …more

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

Cousins

On the rock slide behind Building 10,
we crushed pebbles into powder,
and plotted replacing what his mother smoked

with the products of our pounding.
Peanut butter breath and rubble dust hung
in the sliver of summer air between us.

His mini-fists gripped the sharp edges of the broken
stone mallet he drove into his growing mound
of grit that would always be

bigger than mine under the ferocious bang of a boy
whose whole body rocked to his determination
to smash the world as he knew it to pieces.

When the first big rock split open,
I looked at him and didn’t breathe;
he looked at me, didn’t breathe;

we looked at the center of a rock
for the first time, together,
expecting magic.

Some days I’ll remember that day
as the day we realized, forever,
that a rock is just a rock

through to its core. But when alcoholism
comes to him as naturally as his dimples,
this day will be an exhale; the final finger flex

of a throbbing fist; it will be blood
seeping from cut hands—all of the blood—
drops that dripped free and those that pooled

in his dirty palm to dry up together,
to waste, in the cracks in his lifeline.

-Jonterri Gadson

Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.

At the Book Shrink

one learns to say “my body uses me
as a grape uses wine–”

to talk about inevitability,
the essence of plot. …more

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

“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

A Rumpus Original Poem by Kristina Marie Darling

beloved. The raison d’être of the melancholic’s affliction. Consider the graceful line of his wool coat, its fabric dark against the towering snowdrifts. …more

La Femme Rouge: Redux
(Red Riding Hood, Aged)

What I know is more than thorn
and thistle, whistling through
an oak forest, trees large as barns. …more

THE TRANSLATORS

After reading about Caesar
And Pompey, we searched
Until we found a nearly perfect
Antique plate. Speaking …more

WalMart Supercenter

God Bless America says the bumper sticker on the racer-red
Rascal scooter that accidentally cuts me off in the Walmart parking lot
after a guy in a tricked out jeep with rims like chrome pinwheels tries
to pick me up by honking, all before I make it past the automatic doors
waiting to accept my unwashed hair, my flip-flops, my lounge pants. …more

Like an Old Chest in a New House

I want to be let down gently
but destined to tumble I am …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

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