NaPoWriMo

Lover, Lover: a Poem

A prompt from Maureen Thorson.

“In your poem for today, use a simple phrase repeatedly, and then make statements that invert or contradict that phrase.”

I wasn’t a lover; I was in love.
I transcribed messages from Cupid
onto your skin in lazy patterns.
I wasn’t a lover; I was in love.
I wrote you sonnets for each season
your heart quivered.
I wasn’t a lover; I was in love.
I drank of the light that glimmered
from your gazes.
I wasn’t a lover; I was in love.
I followed the pattern of your gait
and translated it into a message
only Morse himself could understand.
I wasn’t a lover; I was in love.
I took lessons in elocution,
so I could speak your name
in the most divine way.
I wasn’t a lover; I was in love.
I tasted the nectar of your cologne
to better ache for your touch
when you weren’t near.
I wasn’t a lover; I was in love.
I memorized poems to whisper
into the moonlight to send off
so you could still hear me –
even when I wasn’t near.
I wasn’t a lover; I was in love.
I always did love you, even before
the words cascaded from my lips.

Isabelle Palerma

Restored Sight/Rediscovery: a Poem

A prompt from a.r. rogers:

“If I gave in to my free will today…”

It’s easy to think someone else
is the master of our circumstances –
a puppeteer
and we’re marionettes, strings tugged on.
But if I were in charge
of my own strings for a change,
perhaps I would cross a few things off
my list – not my to-do list,
but my bucket list.

Instead of going grocery shopping,
I’d go zip lining in the jungle.
Instead of writing poetry in my room,
I’d be performing it on a stage.
Instead of being a coward,
I’d be brave.
Instead of loving,
I’d make love in the rain.

I never wished to be hollow.
I never wished to be empty.
& yet, somewhere along the way,
I lost sight of free will, and I gave my keys
to a different master.
Somewhere along the way, I surrendered
myself and nobody found the heart
to tell me
I could be anything I want.
I just need to rediscover my free will.

This is the beginning of restored sight.
The start of a rediscovery.

I’m giving in to my free will today.

Isabelle Palerma

Her Beauty in Full: a Poem

As April starts Global Poetry Writing Month, I figured I’d kick off the month with a poem of my own. The prompt comes from raeonpaper:

the moon’s yearning whisper.

The deterioration of her internal language
results in an abject pleading,
a fullness only seen from behind the gauze
of cloud,
the thin of cloth, the shape of pregnancy.
A moon’s desolate murmur.

She speaks in a low tone,
too soft for most,
yet those who listen
know.

Isabelle Palerma

Softening, Out-of-Focus Romance, & Love Extinguished: Three “Ghost Line” Poems.

In March of 2009, the poet Rachel McKibbens introduced the poetry community to the concept of the “ghost line”. McKibbens defines the ghost line as “an inspiring line or image that becomes the unseen first line of a poem”.

The poet Ollie Schminkey provided their readers with a poetry prompt on April 9, 2025.

The prompt is as follows:

Use a line of a lyric from a song you have been listening to as a ghost line.

i: softening

Before they exhume our bodies
from this cold hard earth,
I will make a subtle plea,
begging you to quiet that nest
you have woven in your skull.
(Silence the birds or hornets or whomever
comes to roost
in the twigs and branches there.)

Before they dig our bodies
from this cemetery ground,
I will make a hushed demand.
Relax your body beside me.
Your skeleton is crafted of exquisite granite,
but I remember when it was bone.
Soften, my love,
and be still.

ii: out-of-focus romance

This twig and branch nest sculpture is home
to a part of me I have never named.
Creatures who blur the edges of memory
when a lover is involved.
(It’s not that I don’t remember –
it just becomes out-of-focus
like a dream.)

This is what happens when you have been raised
on tawdry romances and inescapable dreams.

*Photos via Yaroslav Shuraev, Daria Liudnaya, & Natalia Naitkevich.*

iii: love extinguished

These wraiths might not catch breath
as they dance along cobblestone,
but, so long as I am here
with you, my love,
none of the rest matters.

I have diaries scrawled with messages
of love,
dedicated to the creatures
who have blurred the edges
of my memories.

Yet I watch the apparitions
and know the truth.
I have you, and you have me.
(We are here among tombstones,
and love like ours cannot be extinguished.)

Isabelle Palerma

Nostomania: a Poem

“A deep longing for home — not just as a place, but as a feeling.”

This rampant desire seizes a deep part of me
like breath
(nearly as important as the inhalation/exhalation
my lungs have been known to practice daily).

I have searched for belonging in places,
in persons unfamiliar as though the answers
would simply arrive.
I grew up in a house that was beautiful,
but I felt like I was sleeping in hotel paper.

I have sought something deeper
than the flimsy doilies and brocade curtains.
Something I could place more value in
than porcelain dolls purchased for me
(without a single consideration
into my interests, my passions).

I have wished for something that birthday candles
could not even begin
to scratch the surface of.

If I told you,
perhaps you’d laugh.
An orphan does not have a family,
you would remind me,
as I introduce you to my mother and father,
my brothers and their wives,
the grandmothers and grandfathers,
all the cousins and aunts and uncles.
Poverty does not look like all of this.

(Then,
why did I feel so empty?)

Homelessness does not come
when you have shelter,
a roof over your head.

(But then, explain why
I only found a home
when I found someone who loves me
unconditionally.)