Thursday, April 2, 2026

NaPoWriMo - April, 2026 - Poem: Cowed

NaPoWriMo 2026

04/02/26 - Day 2 of 30

NaPoWriMo.net Article


NaPoWriMo Prompt

Speaking of things that are unsettling, it’s now time for our daily prompt — optional, as always! In her poem, “Pittsylvania County,” Ellen Bryant Voigt recounts watching her father and brother play catch with sensory detail and a strangely foreboding sense of inevitability. The speaker watches the scene, but is outside of it – cut off. She’s not so much jealous of the interaction between her father and brother, as filled with a pervading sense that she wants something more or different from life than what the moment seems to presage. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.


My Poem

Cowed


All we were doing was walking home from school,

My sister and I.

Awkward in our shared innocence,

We tumbled by.


The bully came rushing out of her house,

Flying and snarling.

Barely stopping in front of us to scream,

Spitting and cursing.


Oh, how I longed for the spirit to fight.

Woe was me,

For the bully punched my sister in the face,

As I stood alee.


And I fought my instinct,

Yet I knew

To grow up would be

To mewl.

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