I'm not sharing this across the main NaPo site this evening. It doesn't follow the daily prompt, but was written in response to Christopher Luna's Tuesday Zoom workshop. The prompt I responded to starts with reading Dear Aleph by Solmaz Sharif. From there I used Chris's notes and questions and inquires:
Write a poem that is a letter to someone or something.
What does every nation do?
This is my response.
Dear Lavonne,
I’m unsure how to spell your name.
And I can’t ask you because you signed it
as La Vonne and sometimes LaVonne
as one word. And I can’t ask you because
you’re dead. And every nation loves a civil war,
loves to split us down the middle like our left
and right hemispheres, as if both of ourselves
shouldn’t talk to each other, as if a first name
could be two words instead of one, as if one nation
under God was diagnosed with an abundance
of dopamine, just like you, that one nation saw
things that were not real or factual or imaginary
or fake or altered or redacted and so it split itself
down the middle, so each side could own its own
illusions. How does it feel to be told you’re one thing
when you’re made of more than two? How does it feel
to be called crazy? To be divvied up and diagnosed,
given pills, and told everything is true, all of it, even the lies?
The pills won’t harm you. Solitary confinement
is for your own good. Foster care for your children
is for the best. ECT will cure you even from yourself.
With Warmth,
Your Granddaughter
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