Day 6 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2024

Day 6 . . . 1/5 of the way through April! Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a minimum poem.” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “[W]rite a poem rooted in ‘weird wisdom,’ by which we mean something objectively odd that someone told you once, and that has stuck with you ever since. Need an example? Check out Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem ‘Making a Fist.’” My poem today is a tanka, a small Japanese poetic form. I'm using the traditional format for the English tanka: syllable patterns of 5-7-5-7-7. I should note that many contemporary tanka writers no longer use this shape. I'm merging prompts as usual: a poem that's minimum in size if not importance and also something my father told me over and over when I was a child, that has stuck with me all my life. Papa's mantra: “You have to be better than them.” Who is “them”? I knew he meant white people. Brown sun on an all white and black beach. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

NaPoWriMo / PAD 2024 • Pick a day: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30