deluge

#28
sometimes the only way to deal is to keep a screen between you and everything

[i wrote this literally looking at my cat looking through a window screen, but, y’know]


#29
earthquake weather: when you hear an earthquake more than feel it

this morning mom called crows nature’s bullies, to which i said yes, but they would bring a knife to a gun fight and win

love this one. crow power! xD in all seriousness, though, corvids are super smart. >.> i also love how your poems are so concise yet profound, full of interesting imagery, and observant. it's been great reading your poetry this napo, mesh! ^-^

#31
april is always a study in contrasts -
highs, lows, clear days and foggy mornings

#32
nothing makes me want to live on the coast more than cool april nights when the fog is rolling in
[early summer days just reinforce the desire to flee]

spearmint - thank you!

you did it!! i love every single one of them and especially the bonus ones <3

psa: my router is dying (or has heat stroke, who knows) so uh fingers crossed this even posts

#33
april is the cruelest month, going from beautifully cold to summer in the space of two days

#34
i don’t understand graveyards
i
i knew my great-grandparents, and one’s grave i’ve never seen, and the other’s ashes were scattered in a park she never went to

ii.i
my grandparents are buried somewhere in the midwest, not together

ii.i
my grandparents will live together forever in small boxes side by side, but first we have to get grandma out of the office

iii.
my aunt keeps my uncle in his darkroom, in exile for a betrayal not fully in his control

iii.i
she keeps three of her four dogs on the fireplace mantel

iv
we’ve lost four cats and a dog (and i don’t remember the first) and never understood keeping them in places of honor rather than love

v
gravestones are all i have to connect myself back to history
[and there’s one back east that connects me to almost everyone buried the past four hundred years]

(in case i fall off the face of the internet)

first world problems:
the frustration of videos not loading because the wifi couldn’t take the first heat wave of the year

omgg you actually used that line!! *heart-eyes*

@alliyah i blame u

#36
where i’m from no one’s ever heard of
(except now people come here on purpose and 15 year old me would be horrified because all i knew then was a downtown that was dead by 9, and criminal by 9:15)
unless you know what 45 minutes out of san francisco means
(and never call is san fran or frisco - it’s the city)
and how that encompasses an area of 45 miles because 45 minutes is a laughable estimate because traffic is a hell better left not understood -
and that the bay gives new meaning to microclimates because coast, bay, inland, and valley all mean different things within 45 miles and two mountain ranges.
where i’m from you hear the same story - i grew up here and moved because no one could afford to live here anymore - too close to the city and silicon valley for our farm town to come close to the stagnation needed for any of us to have hope
(and the newcomers are everything wrong with my generation and oblivious as to why the locals are hostile - even the ones we like)



[side note: the traffic line - i kind of want to make it "better left unturned" but couldn't decide if that actually worked or not]


@Spearmint - I had to, especially after your comment!

#37
if everything we do is variations on a theme, who do we lodge a complaint with?

april variations never quite vary if fifteen years of poems only show that earthquakes and allergies and existential crisis of religion and history and sense of self and our place in a universe that has spent over two thousand years persecuting my mother’s people and all i can come back to every year is how it never really changes

#38
sometimes i don’t know how to reconcile the disparate parts of me - the history rooted 400 years in this land (though on the other coast) and the history lost after five generations rooted in a people expelled from a homeland we still are told we have no right to (and are vilified even still for wanting that dream) two thousand years past. the latter is tied up in uncertainty and changed names and languages not passed on save in family lore and the evidence we see in our faces and a story that we will never fully know

I just love how bite sized but distilled your poetry is! I definitely underestimate by how long the poetry is but you say so much with so little and it's awesome!
Great job at completing NaPo and writing so much poetry <3

AH! I've caught back up - really have enjoyed reading your thread this year as I always do.

LOVE the "where I'm from poem" <3

33&34 are some of my faves too of course since I love graveyard poetry and I think you've got a lot of intriguing threads there especially in conversation with each other.

also internet-dying poems AHH. Yep. That is a vibe. <3

37 & 38 are very solid conclusions for your thread and some of my favorite from the month too. "the history lost after five generations rooted in a people expelled from a homeland we still are told we have no right to (and are vilified even still for wanting that dream)" !!

Congratulations on surpassing NaPo, Mesh! Not surprised! Well done, another NaPo in the books ~ and your long-record is safely defended in the YWS record hall of fame too!