Day 21 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2026 / Stafford 95

Greetings once more, friends! My poem today is #95 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #460, including last year's Stafford Challenge poem count). Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: Write a “poem in which you muse on your name and nicknames you’ve been given or, if you like, the name and nicknames for an animal, plant, or place.” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For the third Two-for-Tuesday prompt:  1) Write a high poem, and/or . . . 2) Write an low poem.” I've been successful this month in consistently combining the prompts. Done again today, with all three prompts. Also, I'm writing today in the haibun form — a Japanese poetic form with a prose paragraph and a haiku together. Nicknames High and Low             —haibun In fifth grade, my classmate Steven Pasquale called me “The Goat,” a pun on my family name, and that nickname stuck for a year, with other classmates also calling me that. Thank goodness it went away. Thirty or forty years later, there was a high point for that nickname when people started referring to the GOAT as an acronym for “greatest of all time,” applied often to Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali. But there was no such high point when we were in fifth grade. Steven also made up another nickname: “Gotera Paper” (that is, “go tear a paper,” like in the bathroom). That was a low point that only stuck around for a day or two, again thank goodness. If I had been sharper, I could have struck back with a nickname for Steven like “Piss Quality.” I wonder where Steven is these days — never too late, even sixty years on.                         Friends called me “The Goat”                         when we were ten. They were right —                         “greatest of all time”! —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Mountain Goat (Photo Source) Today, Alan is also combining both prompts — this poem is about the radio biz, especially stage names for radio personalities. These Are the Pros and Cons of Broadcasting In Tuscaloosa, two guys in the dorm room right next door “studied” media, the jock who couldn’t walk on baseball half-assing his sports writing, not being telegenic, and a radio DJ, another aspiring Rush. In those days, local stations weren’t all syndicated yet, and one learned cultivating personality alone, unless a car wash opened or a B-side musician headlined a Shriners potluck. I won’t name these two—the sports guy’s byline runs locally, but barely; the DJ’s name on air is still “Steve Shannon,” a common DJ handle in the Ronald Reagan years, but this one once ridiculed a local public figure, already troubled, until he threw himself—overpass, oncoming traffic, morning rush hour—Steve Shannon changed his name and took graveyard shifts at a small sister station until notoriety faded and he could resume being Steve Shannon on air at a charity bazaar or some rural high school dance, introducing the prom queens whose names remain in gossip scrawled on yearbook endpapers. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Okay, we're three weeks down. Thanks for coming by the blog. See you again tomorrow? Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

Day 16 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2024

Day 16. "It’s Selena Day, National Orchid Day, National Librarian Day, National Eggs Benedict Day, National Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day . . . and much more!" Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which you closely describe an object or place, and then end with a much more abstract line that doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course, really does. The ‘surprise’ ending to this James Wright poem is a good illustration of the effect we’re hoping you’ll achieve. An abstract, philosophical kind of statement closing out a poem that is otherwise intensely focused on physical, sensory details.” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's Two-for-Tuesday prompt: 1) Write a poetic form poem, and/or . . . 2) Write an anti-form poem.” My poem today merges the two prompts. It is a haibun, a Japanese poetic form that yokes a haiku with a prose paragraph — Brewer's form and anti-form in one poem. À la Thorson, the poem describes a location and then transforms into something else at the end. The speaker of the poem is the mythological Philippine sea dragon, Bakunawa, who strives to eat the sky's seven moons and almost succeeds until people figure out they can stop Bakunawa by making loud noises — banging drums or pots and pans — ultimately saving the last moon, which we still see in the sky to this day. (Wikipedia) Bakunawa the Sea Dragon Desires the Seven Moons in High Heaven I look around my domain, blue and black and glorious. Water flows through all my doors, while my eyes pierce the darkness. Schools of fish swirl like spirals of glinting light in the distance. I often swim up to the surface of the water and point my snout towards the heavens. Up there in the firmament, I glimpse against the sea of bright points of light, the faraway stars, seven spheres gleaming in the night. Every time I do this, the number of spheres changes, sometimes just two or three, other times six or seven. These moons glimmer in different shapes, from curving slivers to crescents to full roundness. I hunger for them. Below the surface, I feast on whales and massive clouds of shrimp, but there is nothing like the seven spheres here. During the day, there is the fire of the one sun when it rules the sky. The sun is too hot to eat. But when the sun is gone away each night, the seven moons shed their delicious light, and I want to eat them.                             I will launch myself                                     into the star-riddled sky,                                             eat all seven moons. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] "Bakunawa" by Vince Gotera Here is a phone-drawing I made some years ago of Bakunawa eating a moon. The dragon is in the national colors of the Philippines: red, blue, and yellow. (Click on the sketch to see it larger.) If you google "Bakunawa art" you can find plenty of artistic renditions of the Bakunawa. In this poem, I allude to one of my favorite poems, "Morning Swim" by Maxine Kumin, which has the lines "water fell / through all my doors." Incidentally, a poem of mine on a similar theme, "Bakunawa the Sea Dragon Eats the Fifth Moon," was published yesterday in the Eye to the Telescope magazine. Go over and read that poem to compare with today's poem? Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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National Poetry Month / NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2022

Friends, welcome to a new round of April poems! Once again, I'll be following prompts from Robert Lee Brewer at Writer's Digest and Maureen Thorson at NaPoWriMo, mixing them whenever possible. Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “[P]ick a word that begins with F, make it the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. I don't know if it's because today is April Fool's Day, Friday, or just the first day of the challenge, but today really feels like an F type of day.” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo suggestion: “The prompt is based on Robert Hass’s remarkable prose poem, 'A Story About the Body.' The idea is to write your own prose poem that, whatever title you choose to give it, is a story about the body. The poem should contain an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one crisp visual image.” Today, I wrote another poem to go in my aswang novel-in-poems. Aswang are mythical Philippine monsters. At this point in the novel, our protagonist Clara and her grown son Malcolm have returned from the US to the Philippines. She is a manananggal who can split her body at the waist and fly with bat-like wings that grow at that moment. I am melding both prompts today. However, instead of simply a prose poem, as Maureen prompted, I have written a haibun, a Japanese form that combines prose and haiku. Final Flight The breeze ruffles my long hair, invisible fingers combing. I beat my wings hard and rise into the glorious night, the moon glowing above me like a mother’s face lit by a votive candle. As I swoop and glide, the dark land below — rice paddies, mountains afar — and the thousand stars above swivel majestically around this small half-woman. I revel in the wind buffeting against my pinions for the last time. Then down down to the jungle clearing where Malcolm, always faithful son, stands waiting with a bolo. We look at each other and I say, “Yes.” I gingerly lower my torso on my waiting hips.                             Oh mother     I strike                             twice     the wings fall from your back                             you stand     free at last —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]             Image by flo222 on Pixabay Friends of the blog know that for several years now, I've showcased April poems by my poet friend Thomas Alan Holmes alongside my own. Alan is an associate dean at East Tennessee State University, and his administrative and academic work is keeping him away from poetry this April. So sorry about that, Alan! Some good news, though: his first collection of poems will be coming out from Iris Press this year. Everyone, I'll let you know when that book comes out. Early congrats, Alan, old friend. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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Day 19 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2018

Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: "Today we challenge you to write a paragraph that briefly recounts a story, describes the scene outside your window, or even gives directions from your house to the grocery store. Now try erasing words from this paragraph to create a poem or, alternatively, use the words of your paragraph to build a new poem." Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: "For today’s prompt, take the phrase '(blank) Thread;' replace the blank with a word or phrase; make the new phrase the title of your poem; and then, write your poem. Possible titles include: 'New Thread,' 'Old Thread,' 'Twitter Thread,' and 'Blue Thread.'" I'd been fiddling off and on during the day with a transcript of Trump's speech justifying the recent Syria missile attack, hoping to get a decent erasure poem out of it. But no dice. So I went outside my office this evening and took this photo. And here's a haibun on the photo. The closing haiku is an erasure poem teased out from the opening prose, rendered in red, including punctuation. The Last Thread of Ice Is this last thread of ice outside my office building Old Man Winter’s final foot-tall bulwark of hardened snow? A mere twenty feet from where some thin ice hiding in plain sight slipped my feet out from under me six weeks ago, and I broke a rib. A man of 60+ has no business falling down on concrete, whether here at work or somewhere else, the sidewalk in front of my home, say. No amount of planning can save you if winter is out to get you just one more time — I’ve broken a rib three times before. Maybe that’s what they’ll say someday about the late Dr. Gotera: he was a danger to himself on the ice. My ancestral DNA equipped me for Pacific beach sand and a summer sunset, not a snowstorm or the aurora borealis, beautiful as they are, you know? Listen, you gotta watch out for that old scratch, Mr. Winter — he’s a trickster. Is Old Man Winter hiding out somewhere, planning one more late snowstorm?   —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Here's to Jack Frost being done with us! Fingers crossed. Uncle uncle uncle.  ヅ  Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word “comments” in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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Day 12 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2018

Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: "For today’s prompt, write a lament poem. Maybe you lament a relationship or a missed opportunity. Or maybe it’s that doughnut (maybe speaking from personal experience). Whatever it is, today is the day to let it all out — in poem form, of course." Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: "Today, we’d like to challenge you specifically to write a haibun that takes in the natural landscape of the place you live. It may be the high sierra, dusty plains, lush rainforest, or a suburbia of tiny, identical houses — but wherever you live, here’s your chance to bring it to life through the charming mix-and-match methodology of haibun." This prompt is tied to "Our craft resource for the day . . . an essay by Aimee Nezhukumatathil on writing haibun — a Japanese form that blends prose-based travel writing with haiku." This is a wonderful essay, by the way: "More than the Birds, Bees, and Trees: A Closer Look at Writing Haibun." Merging both prompts, but not writing about my current landscape. Instead, the landscape where I grew up. Lament for Childhood The famed seven hills of San Francisco are actually myriad: hills and steep slopes everywhere in the seven-mile by seven-mile square of the city. Sidewalks that are stairways. Trees and houses clinging to ground that cant seemingly at 45°, climbing upward to starry skies. Small ethnic neighborhoods sprinkled around — Russian, Italian, Chinatown, the Black community of Fillmore Street, the Hispanic Mission District, Gay Castro — and the Haight Ashbury, the diverse, integrated neighborhood where I grew up before the hippies came. Downtown, in the Financial District, when I was a teenager, they built a new peak: the Transamerica Pyramid, tallest building in the city, vaulting up to the sky like the seven hills, a new eighth wonder to rival the world-famous towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. What a marvel, what a miracle, the city was in my childhood. Don’t call it Frisco. Native-born San Franciscans just say, The City. Living now thousands of miles away in snow country, I miss my hometown. Such deep richness and largeness of culture and utter beauty. San Francisco. steep hills, The City — pyramid skyscraper glows in my child mind’s eye —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word “comments” in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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