04/19/25 - Day 19 of 30
NaPoWriMo.net Article
NaPoWriMo Prompt
And now for our daily prompt – optional as always. This one is inspired by Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s poem “Song.”
The word “tragedy” comes from the Greek for “goat song.” The song in Kelly’s poem is quite literally a goat song. The poem also describes a tragedy, both in the modern sense of an awful event, and the ancient dramatic sense of a play in which someone does something terrible, and the play’s action shows the consequences.
The poem has a timeless, could-have-happened-anywhere/anywhen quality that I associate with blues and folk ballads – including murder ballads (a subgenre of song dealing with a gruesome crime, first arising from broadsheet ballads sold at English executions, and which later came to America in forms like “The Knoxville Girl” and then morphed their way into country music).
Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that tells a story in the style of a blues song or ballad. One way into this prompt may be to use it to retell a family tragedy or story, or to retell a crime or tragic event that occurred in your hometown.
My Poem
Misophonic Misery
Her numerous mouth noises were never her fault.
Mashed potatoes were mush in a sausage grinder.
Corn kernels were the typebar strikes of an off-track platen.
Every swallow of milk was the chugging glugging of a nomad at an oasis.
I despised her sheer audacity at making us so uncomfortable, so embarrassed.
Almost five decades later, I sit lost in numerous regrets.
Hoping whoever took my sister released her unharmed and well.
Her mouth-breathing, lip-smacking, throat-clearing tics
By now may be driving a significant other to their limit.
I’d give my all to be in her misophonic thrall again.
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