Anti-Muses, Rewritten Calendars, Forgotten Kitchens, and the Poem That Waits Anyway
A selection of poems from the Second week of NaPoWriMo
Dear Readers,
The second week of our poetry month unfolded with prompts that dared us to be a little strange, a little playful, and at times, painfully honest. If week one was about gathering momentum, week two was about opening the floodgates—of invention, reflection, and everything in between.
From reinventing holidays to overhearing monuments in quiet rebellion, from imagining life without poetry to tracing grief through rearranged calendars—this week was a map of unexpected turns. We welcomed many new voices across regions, whose poems brought surprising textures to our daily readings: wit wrapped in myth, resistance disguised as ritual, memory carried in the smell of mustard oil or the crackle of printer paper.
Below, you’ll find a curated selection of poems that stood out—not just for how they responded to the prompt, but for how they carved out something memorable in form and feeling.
Day Eight Prompt: “A fun poem where a mythical character is your roommate”
Note: We have removed the poem 'I share rent with Ravana' by Manav Mota as it was found to be generated or perfected by AI. Such practices are unethical and disrespect the craft.
In “Of Chaos, Canvases & Chitralekha”, Bidisha Kashyap reimagines the mythological muse not as a distant figure but as a chaotic, captivating roommate who brings storms, sketches, and spells into the poet’s home. Chitralekha doesn’t knock—she arrives like weather, rearranges the furniture of reality, and smears her laughter on mirrors.
This poem was a surreal, sensory ride through a house transformed by art—where basil blooms to humming, metaphors melt in teacups, and spoons become fish. It’s both humorous and haunting, a celebration of unruly imagination that refuses to do the laundry because, well—“we have stars to rearrange.”
she irons her dupattas with lightning.
leaves her footprints of ink.
once, I saw her braid Usha's name
into a thundercloud and send it flying
through the fourth-floor window.
Day Nine Prompt: “Invent a Holiday”
Bharti Bansal’s poem “Loving a Borderline Person Day” reflected on how we engage with others’ pain. Through sharp imagery and biting commentary, Bharti critiqued the superficiality of performative empathy—heart emojis, fleeting social media posts, and curated gestures—while urging readers to confront the raw, complex reality of supporting those who feel unloved and unseen.
This day commemorates the kindness
That hands out love at discounted prices
For people who beg for it, despite the deceit.
In “National Printer Plight Day”, Sandeep Rawat turns the humble printer into a surprising emblem of quiet resistance and fading relevance. The poem begins in a space of nostalgia—leaf projects, scrapbooks, and the thrill of homework that once made us feel rooted in the physical world. But as the Ashoka tree falls and real leaves vanish, the printer becomes a stand-in for loss, forced to mimic nature in pixels and ink.
There’s a sly irony at work here. The printer, a machine caught between eras, isn’t to blame—it’s just surviving. And yet, Sandeep grants it a kind of tragic agency: it protests, limps, resents the rise of AI, and leaves ink stains like warnings. It’s both victim and witness, burdened with memory in a world obsessed with speed and sleekness.
And when they cut down the only Ashoka tree in our park,
I had to prompt my printer
to impress a tree leaf for my project.
That day, my printer preserved a prayer for both of us.
Day Ten Prompt: “Dairy of a Monument”
In “Dear Diary”, Sakshi Argade gives voice to Bibi Ka Maqbara, the lesser-known, often overlooked monument in Aurangabad that stands in the shadow of the Taj Mahal. Through the monument’s eyes, we explore themes of neglect, identity, and the weight of history. What begins as a simple letter in the voice of the monument, becomes a powerful critique of the ways in which history is commodified, forgotten, and appropriated.
The poem pulls no punches, detailing the Taj’s overshadowing presence—the whispers of comparison that leave Bibi Ka Maqbara feeling like a mere imitation, a “copy” that cannot live up to the grandeur of its sibling. The poem is rife with images of decay, both literal and metaphorical.
Sakshi’s words offer more than just a lament for the monument’s physical state; they point to a broader societal and political neglect. The children who sing its praises are the same who trade its miniatures for food, their innocence juxtaposed with the harsh realities of poverty. There’s a critique here, too, of the system that prizes image over substance, style over substance. The monument, reduced to a symbol, is left to bear witness to a world more invested in the aesthetics of history than in its truth.
I stand under the moonlit sky and weep in silence
about the flaws I held with pride, all my life
until I realized how I’d never be enough,
no matter how hard I try for the badges of accomplishments
are decorated on the marbles of the original breathing in Agra.
Shubhi Dixit’s Mudslinging breathes life into Mahatma Phule Wada, transforming the historic home of Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule into a poignant witness to their legacy. The poem speaks directly to the modern struggle over their story, echoing the reported censorship of the film Phule. Through the voices of the Phules’ spirits, Dixit creates a dialogue that blends hope, irony, and quiet defiance, critiquing the erasure of their fight against caste and gender oppression. With vivid imagery—of playing girls, distant train horns, and conversations between spirits—Shubhi offers a subtle yet profound reflection on the politics of memory, urging us to honor truth over suppression.
A train horn blows a few kilometers
away from the Mahatma Phule Wada.
Birds interrupted by a shrillness
they could never replicate
curse at its audacity.
Day Eleven Prompt: “The Calendar rearranges itself out of boredom”
Bidisha Kashyap’s The Calendar Rearranges Itself Out of Boredom explored the idea of grief disrupting the orderly flow of time. In her poem, the calendar becomes a restless entity, tossing out seasons and reshuffling months like an impatient force. April spills into December, anniversaries stretch and overlap, and memories return uninvited at the most random moments—on the bus, in the middle of buying fruit, or when a familiar scent resurfaces. Bidisha vividly portrays how grief disregards time’s structure, with the dead wandering back, uninvited, while memories, like ghosts, refuse to stay in the past. The poem also reflects on the disorientation of living with constant reminders of loss, where even the body forgets how to brace for anniversaries.
april leaks into december,
and grief walks in barefoot,
dragging her old, wet hem.
it rearranges itself
because grief has no schedule,
and memory never learned discipline.
Day Twelve Prompt: “I am not a poet when I answer emails”
Note: We have removed the poem 'The poem is never angry' by Arka Pal as it was found to be generated or perfected by AI. Such practices are unethical and disrespect the craft.
Shambhavi’s “I am not fully human until I am a poet” echoes the same duality but with a softer realism. Her speaker moves fluidly between the day’s mechanical demands and those sudden shifts in perception—moments when the poem-self re-emerges, unexpectedly, as rain light paints the street or a glove on the sidewalk speaks of loss. She captures how poetry is not just written but lived, often invisibly, in the pauses and white spaces of our lives. Her practical self knows structure, but it’s the poetic one that truly feels, tastes silence, and deciphers intimacy.
I am deadlines met, forms completed, shelves organized.
I am not a poet when I answer emails,
But I am not fully human until I am a poet.
Day Thirteen Prompt: “The Kitchen’s Cache”
Paarmita Vedi's Bipolar Rituals: A Kitchen Elegy and Anurag's The Kitchen Remembers both turn the kitchen into a powerful metaphorical and emotional space—one that remembers, resists, and retells. While Paarmita writes from the visceral immediacy of mental illness, inherited trauma, and the oscillating rituals of survival, Anurag’s poem draws memory like steam from a kettle—slow, steady, and heavy with generational presence.
Paarmita’s kitchen is not simply domestic—it’s divine, tragic, manic, and intimate. Her poem pulsates with the rhythm of bipolarity, swinging between poetic ecstasy and paralyzing exhaustion. Food becomes both medicine and memory; the act of cooking a way to reclaim autonomy and rewrite generational pain. The vivid sensory overload of spices, saffron, onions, and “mustard oil like incense” gives way to the stark hollowness of depressive episodes—where even holding a potato becomes a sacred gesture of clinging to life. The presence of a caring partner reframes the kitchen not as a site of duty, but of healing and quiet resistance, subtly challenging the silence surrounding women’s mental health across generations.
I cook like I’m trying
to reassemble my mother’s body from memory.
Anurag’s poem, by contrast, was a quiet elegy of familial love and grief, told through food. Each section unspools a memory—his grandmother’s affectionate scolding, his mother’s sweat-soaked patience, his father’s chai, and the old mutton pans that still bear the marks of love. The tone is tender, and nostalgic, with food as the connective tissue between generations—each meal echoing unsaid thank yous, every ingredient steeped in stories. There is gentleness even in loss, especially in the final stanzas where spoiled lemons and flickering fridge lights symbolize hungers that outlast us—emotional, unfulfilled, but remembered.
When I die,
let the autopsy report show
mustard oil in my veins,
tea leaves in my lungs,
and every unspoken thank you
lodged between my ribs
like fishbones.
Day Fourteen Prompt: “Anti-Muse”
Saanvi’s Ode to Tax Codes and Spreadsheet Cells takes on the prompt Anti-Muse with humor, clarity, and just the right amount of existential dread. She meets tax codes and spreadsheet cells with full-body recoil, comparing them to everything from ghosted exes to audit-flavored adulthood. Her voice carries frustration but also a sly kind of comedy, turning even “Form 16A” into a punchline. Yet even she acknowledges a strange calm in the rhythm of systems—numbers that don’t break your heart, only your spirit. She shuts the file and escapes back into metaphors, rejecting the anti-muse entirely, if only for one more fiscal year.
Talk to me of love, loss,
even liver failure,
but don’t—don’t—mention quarterly returns
Notable mentions from the second week include:
Keerthy's "My Roommate Krishna Keeps Stealing My Life (and Butter)"
A hilarious and heartwarming take on mythology reimagined through a modern-day flatmate—Krishna, the god who never pays rent but always heals.He flooded the kitchen once—
not with water,
but with ghee.
Tried to explain it was a “Kaliya Naag incident”
replaying in the pressure cooker.
I didn’t ask follow-up questions.
Viplav Singh's "The Great Indian Sewing Kit Festival"
A meditation on repair and resilience, centered around the humble sewing kit—a quiet metaphor for familial continuity.Not to glorify frugality.
But to remind ourselves
that somewhere in the back of every Indian drawer
is a box
that refuses
to let things fall apart
without a fight.
Donna Sharon D'Souza's "Say It Anyway Day"
A call to vocalize love, gratitude, and praise before it's too late. This poem gently nudges us to express what we often suppress.This is a holiday for words that don’t need an occasion.
For warmth with no transaction.
For noticing and then saying it out loud.
Because most of the time,
what we don't say
still matters.
Ananya Srikkant's "Alai Minar"
Told from the perspective of an unfinished monument, this poem explores abandonment, longing, and the search for identity.tonight,
when the wind swirls within me
echoing lost hopes
but it’ll move over to Qutub
for a place to rest
Shereen Mir's "My Anti-Muse: A Cigarette"
Deeply personal and searingly honest—an anti-love poem packed with pain.You were the stench of absence,
the nicotine-stained ghost
of all the things a father never said,
a brother never kept, and a love never proved.
I buried you in memory,
tied in cellophane
and tucked behind a mental shelf
labeled do not open.
Avni Aryan's "Going to public places alone - an anti-muse"
A satirical and poignant look at how society treats solitude as shame, especially in public spaces.Nobody talks about the embarrassment in asking for a table for one
Bidya's "Kaleidoscope of Truths: My Anti-Muse"
Tackles self-erasure and the reluctance to center one’s own pain—an aching confession wrapped in poetic form.How long will I keep hiding behind
unnamed pain
unidentified barking dogs
camouflaged womanhood
rages of father
griefs of mother
Ishitv Vats's “Kitchen as Warzone”
Equating domestic space with battleground, this poem critiques gender roles, emotional labor, and kitchen hierarchies.Don't let the onions and potatoes
distract you from the fact that
this is a warzone
borders were decided before your birth
the sun and the moon fight everyday
over the timing of tea
Disha's "Kitchen Creates Rituals"
Anthropomorphizes kitchen elements, turning everyday routines into metaphors for emotional and romantic endurance.A pressure cooker passed down generations
still whistling with it
the stories of how everything has changed
but nothing has really changed
Reshma Khatoon's "An Ode to My Worn-Out Scotch Brite"
A grimy and powerful metaphor for emotional burnout and repetitive domestic labor, brilliantly delivered.Some hells are sink shaped.
Mine is steel, its drain a throat
that gargles cold cold water
and my own choked prayers.
Devika's "Cycles of Circles"
Gentle, cyclical reflections on poetry, routine, womanhood, and legacy.
you are art, when you drag yourself from the bed everyday
monotony glares at you, and poetry, it holds your crumbling body
Shalini Chakraborty's "Kindly Review my Soul"
A coder-poet's lament about fitting art into 9-to-5 professionalism. It's clever, funny, and quietly tragic.it is difficult to bury
Poetry under the files and deadlines,
Verses don’t know how to work around the clock.
Aadya Singh's "Diary of Rani ki Vav"
A beautiful personification of a forgotten stepwell, calling for remembrance beyond textbook lines.I am a letter the queen wrote
to the earth
Now I lie in print
a grayscale afterthought
With that, I'll sign off. You can read all the featured poems here. The poems mentioned in the notable mentions are available on the respective poets' social media or by contacting them directly. We'll be tagging everyone in our social media post. See you next week with more exciting prompts and new featured poets!