iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

LARP and (Mis)information, or The Semiotics of Lying for Fun "I’ve been thinking for a while about how information works at LARP. More specifically, how misinformation can be introduced into the LARP space, intentionally or not." Full article: rubecso.substack.com/p/larp-and-m...

030

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

My latest Substack post is about probably my first Roleplaying Opinion (TM) that I formed: namely, that the real problem with Edgy characters is that they’re static rather than dynamic. rubecso.substack.com/p/static-vs-... #larp #roleplaying #ttrpg #criticalrole4

220

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

I did it! A poem draft every day in April for #napowrimo2026 :D This is the first year I've managed all the way through. #napowrimo #poetry #writingcommunity

Text:

What is a Golem (X)

golem /ɡəʊlɛm/

From Hebrew: גולם

– n. (in Jewish legends) a figure made of clay that comes to life
– n. a machine that behaves like a human
– n. an inchoate object, a formless mass
– n. a body without a soul
– n. a weapon with a face
– n. a monstrous protector
– n. a pupa for a paper butterfly
– n. the name of G-D hidden under mud
– n. an infinitely moldable symbol

0101

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Had a brainwave when writing this #napowrimo draft, when I realised I could use the same first line as a previous one in this set. #napowrimo2026 #poetry #writingcommunity

What is a Golem (VIII)

Mud brick wall I stand between
the conquerors and conquered.
Barbed wire blossoms from
my hands. I am the soldier and I am
the line he guards, jagged scar gouged
into the land and I am the land
that blood cries up from.

081

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

This one needs an additional final line but I haven't found one I like yet, so have an incomplete draft for now. #poetry #napowrimo #napowrimo2026

Text:

What is a Golem (VII)

The stuff that forms my body was once riverbed,
until a portion was set aside, no longer a home
for wriggling things. This is the sculptor’s power,
to split the world in two:
thing / no-thing.

What became of the clay sheared away to leave
mountain nose / philtrum valley,
cave mouth lips / sheer drop cavern throat
hands / light spilling through my fingers?

Sometimes I wonder if that heap of wasted scraps
came together into a new body and walked away.

020

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

It's the home run of #napowrimo2026 and I can feel myself running out of creative steam, but I'm so close to finishing. This is one that doesn't quite feel right to me, but it exists and I can edit or re-do it later. #poetry #napowrimo #writingcommunity

Text:

What is a Golem (VI)

When Enki took dirt from beneath his fingernails
to sculpt his spies to infiltrate the underworld,
He knew to give them limbs, eyes, mouths
to treat with the hideous queen of the dead,
but to make these
a grain too large or small, placed
lopsided, just enough to draw
a grimace. Ugliness is in
the eye of the beholder,
and it takes a not-quite human
to soothe a not-quite-monster.

070

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

This feels like one I'm going to expand on when I'm less tired, but have a starting point for my fifth 'What is a Golem' poems. #napowrimo #poetry #napowrimo2026 #writingcommunity

Text:

What is a Golem (V)

Here, take my arm. The stairs are uneven,
your legs unsteady, and my body is
most beautiful when it's useful. Look
how my hand fits beneath your elbow.

071

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

CW: Violent imagery The fourth of my planned ten 'What is a Golem' poem drafts for #napowrimo2026 #poetry #napowrimo #writingcommunity

Text:

What is a Golem (IV)

A gush of crimson spills
from the skull I smashed
at your command. I cup my hands,
fill them to the brim, so you can see
a universe swirling in an offering bowl.

But when I hold it up, it’s only so much rust,
soaked into already-red mud.

If you had given me a mouth, I would tell you:
even a walking grave remembers
what you hid in it.

052

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Second of my planned ten 'What is a Golem' drafts for the back end of #napowrimo2026 #poetry #napowrimo #writingcommunity

ext:

What is a Golem (II)

This body is not me, not this
mound of muck air moves through
the hollows of its throat, but it is
not me. Its baked skin splits, its
clay face rearranges: a grimace,
a smile, but it is not me. My
me is a scrap of light
buried deep inside, slipped
down through the cracks,
too deep to see, to reach,
to crush. It flickers signals up, waits
to see what the thing
that is not me will do.

0136

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

I've got ten days left of #napowrimo and ten ideas for what a golem can be/mean. I'd like to write the rest if the muse permits. #napowrimo2026 #poetry #writingcommunity

Text:

What is a Golem (I)

Mud brick wall I stand between
hammer blows and fragile bones.
I hold a flock of song birds in my hand,
breath in hollow limbs. They sing until
the shadow of a hawk passes overhead.
Then I gently close my fingers
like floorboards or rafters.

051

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

For most of #napowrimo I've been trying to write a new poem every day, but today I got the itch to finish one that was mostly done. This is the second poem I've written in Yiddish, but the first was more of a translation. #poetry #napowrimo2026 #writingcommunity

(Yiddish, transliteration):

Dos Lid Fun Der Filosof Golem

Baym takh-breg, vi dos vasser rint royt,
ikh khap a hoyfn: veykhe, sheyne leym,
farrikht mayn blote guf, mayn blote heym
mayn alte refue, leym hent oyf leym hoyt.

Oyf mayn tsela, ikh gefin a fingerdruk.
Gedank zey zenen ale bagroben, ober kuk:
di resht fun a mensch lang farshlungen,
durkh di erd fun vos ikh hob geshprungen.

Mentshn vaksn alt nisht. Zey velkn.
Ikh vaks yo alt. Ikh brekh un ikh mikh boyen,
shikhtn oyf shikhtn. Mit azelkhe bleter,
kh’bin mer vi der Matuselah boym.

Nor a boym un a mensch hot otem,
un ikh darf keyn. Ven yene shvotem
zenen khoruv fun sreyfe un mabul,
ikh vel zayn. A mumische ruml,
a sheyne farzeenish, a yidntum fun eyn.

(Yiddish, Hebrew script):

דאָס ליד פֿון דער פילאָסאָף גולם

בײַם טײַך-ברעג, ווו דאָס וואַסער רינט רויט
איך כאַפּ אַ הויףן ווייכע, שיינע ליים
פֿאַרריכט מײַן בלאָטע גוף, מײַן בלאָטע היים,
מײַן אַלטע רפיואה, ליים הענט אויף ליים הויט

אויף מײַן צֵלָע, איך געפֿין אַ פֿינגערדרוק
געדאַנק זיי זענען אַלע באַגראָבן, אָבער קוק:
די רעשט פון אַ מענטש לאַנג פֿאַרשלונגע
דורך די ערד פון וואָס איך האָב געשפּרונגען

מענטשן וואַקסן אַלט נישט.זיי וועלקן.
איך וואַקס יאָ אלט.איך ברעך און איך מיך בויען,
שיכטן אויף שיכטן.מיט אזעלכע בלעטער,
כ'בין מער ווי דער מתושלח בוים.

נאָר אַ בוים און אַ מענטש האָבן אָטעם
און איך דארף קיין נישט .ווען יענע שבטים
זענען חרובֿ דורך שׂרפֿה און מבו
איך וועל זיין: אַ מומישע רומל,
אַ שיינע פֿארזעעניש, אַ יידנטום פֿון איין.

The Song of the Philosopher Golem

By the river-bed, where the water runs red,
I grab a handful: soft, lovely clay,
repair my muddy body, my muddy home,
my old remedy, clay hands on clay skin.

On my rib, I find a fingerprint.
Thought they were all buried, but look:
the remains of a man long swallowed
by the earth from which I sprung.

Humans do not grow old. They shrink.
I do grow old. I break and I build myself,
layer on layer. With such leaves,
I am more like the Methuselah tree.

But a tree and a human have breath
and I need none. When these tribes
are destroyed by fire and flood,
I will be. A deformed heap of rags,
a beautiful monster, a Jewry of one.

150

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Sometimes a poem falls in your lap (or in this case on my notebook). #napowrimo #napowrimo2026 #poetry #writingcommunity

Text (written center-aligned, with the latter half of the lines arranged so the words outline a splodge in the negative space between them)

---

Nature Poem

I sat beneath an old, tall tree
(a yew, I believe), and listened
to the chorus of the birds,
their loud, primordial poetry:
the laughing trochees of the great tit,
the wood pigeon’s wheezing spondees,
the lilting dactyls of the blackbird,
the robin’s belligerent free verse
but then
one of the little
feathered bastards
shat on the
page. So I guess
I’ll write about flowers instead.

082

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Another #napowrimo poem from @hiitssky's prompts on Instagram. Today's was 'After "Night Bird" by Danusha Laméris'. #poetry #napowrimo2026 #writingcommunity

$Text: Between Two Membranes Look closer. All of this– the words in bird song follow-me, follow-me the unfolding in my chest when the earth tilts into the sun a few hours longer, the greenhouse scent of warm, wet soil, the urge to thrust my fingers in, the tug in my gut at the dandelions forcing through paving stones the fractal tree of memories exploding from the robin that lands nearby– all of this exists in a three nanometer gap, with no difference between a sodium ion, a lightning bolt, and a ghost.$

031

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Today's #napowrimo poem is another sponsored one. My friend Josie gave me the prompt 'Hand-Sewing'. #napowrimo2026 #poetry #writingcommunity

Text:

Hand-Sewing

When the fabric is
taught the needle
punctures, drags
the thread like
schunk-schoo,
schunk-schoo,
schunk-schoo,
stitches bold, solid,
hands mechanical,
mind somewhere
away to the side
but when it stretches,
frays,
bunches,
slips
away
from the needle’s
point,
you become
a tiny bird,
carrying each
stitch, like
twigs, arranged in a row that may
blow
away
on a breeze.

061

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Sometimes a #napowrimo poem is dense and important. Sometimes it's just mucking about with adverbs. #napowrimo2026 #poetry #writingcommunity

Text:

Half-Jewishly

I exist
half-Jewishly.

My hair curls
inconsistently.

I digest dairy
intolerantly.

My diet is kosher
occasionally.

Text continues:

I learn Yiddish
Duo-Lingually.

My anxiety comes
intergenerationally.

I enter rooms
apologetically.

I perform Jewishness
Ashkenormatively.

I observe the holidays
ambivalently.

Text continues:

I say the prayers
phonetically.

I read the news
complicitly.

I dissect myself
excessively.

I identify
ambiguously.

I sit in narratives
inconveniently.

163

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Today's #napowrimo poem sprung off from the napowrimo.net prompt: "Today, we challenge you to write a poem that similarly bridges (whether smoothly or not) the seeming divide between poetry and technological advances." #napowrimo2026 #poetry #writingcommunity

Text:

Title: Least Resistance

I don't know.

Maybe I am just a Luddite.
Maybe the Luddites were right.
Maybe trading imperfection for convenience has been killing us since… when?
Since we chose to stay still and plant seeds and let priests and kings take their cut?

I've never lived in a time without supermarkets,
so I don't miss knowing the butcher by name.

There are people living now who won't miss knowing
everything they read was written by a person.

I struggle to write about this without regressing to the cliched notion of the soul.

So much of writing is trying to reroute a river by hand.
The water flows down paths of least resistance, the desire path carved
by everything you've heard already, so if you don’t concentrate,
if you don't tear muscle and tendons wrenching against that gravity,
you end up saying the exact thing that's been said a hundred times before.

‘There is nothing new under the sun.’

Text continues:

So you grab clods of clay and jagged stones and try to carve out some shape
that the water's never flowed before, but there's rocks you can't get out
with your bare hands so you have to leave them there, so it's never shaped
quite how you pictured it, and you're shivering and every joint is screaming
and you've lost track of what you're even trying to do (like how I've lost track
of this metaphor) and who has the energy for this anyway when everything
moves so fast and it takes a thousand hours of digging to produce
an inch of originality and it's so much easier to just let the river flow
where it will.

I don't know.

I have to keep hoping
the sick impulse to reroute that river,
the insanity that makes us see the ugly, unintended shapes
those impassable blocks force us to create and not just accept them
but love them as proof that this was made
by someone with the ability to want things,
I have to hope that specific, human crazy will survive
everything we're doing to cure ourselves.

040

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

#napowrimo poem for today, from a sponsored prompt from my friend Steve. #napowrimo2026 #poetry #writingcommunity

$Text: Chest Pains My dad told me, for a long time he knew his heart was crystalising, felt stalactite shards lining his arteries, burrowing inwards, stabbing fractions closer to the core, and all he wanted was to squeeze out a few more years, a few million grinding beats, until they cracked his sternum, dug out the fist-sized geode gleaming there, inevitable as geology.$

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Today's #napowrimo prompt from www.napowrimo.net was to try a blackout poem. Serendipitously, I found this page from 'If On a Winter's Night a Traveler' by Italo Calvino that happened to contain the word 'erased'. #napowrimo2026 #poetry #escapril #writingcommunity

Page with sections blacked out so these words remain:

You're pursuing
an intimacy
nobody can understand.
you want
to remain
un
erased:
Of course,
that advancing
tide
will carry
you

Same as previous but whited out instead of blacked out

091

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Today's #napowrimo poem is one I had in pieces and decided to try stitching together into a complete draft. Epigram from @danielkahn.bsky.social's 'Diaspora Medley' borschtbeat.bandcamp.com/track/golus-... #poetry #napowrimo2026 #writingcommunity

Text (first half of the poem):

10.4.2026 - Golus

Az ikh volt koyekh hobn
Volt ikh in di gasn gelofn
Un volt geshribn “Golus!
Oy, golus, golus golus…”

you hear it humming, my love, too high
to hear but making my feet twitch, it sits
between us, beneath my tongue, when I
whisper what if, what if we just run?

golus, golus, golus is my oldest heirloom,
the first one out the box in each new house
my mother flung us at, when I sat in
the moving van, so high up I’d imagine
I was riding an elephant, it followed
like a panther in the undergrowth

Text (second half of the poem):

golus, golus, golus is in wet paint, how the smell
sends me back like I’m walking past a sweet shop,
it sleeps on a mattress on the floor, when the echoes
haven’t settled yet and the house isn’t real,
the weightless peak of a parabola, when I’m
thrown into the air

golus, golus, golus is the bus stop I showed you,
where I counted coins, two weeks before
we stuffed our clothes into bin bags and ran,
it’s asking is she still living on that boat
with the bucket and the black spots? it’s her liver,
giving out in a year or five, but no more than ten

and yes, my love, here in this home
we’ve poured ourselves into,
golus, golus, golus is the shears
in my hand, ready to hack at any roots
that tangle round my ankles.

040

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

#napowrimo poem for today, again from @hiitssky's prompts on Instagram. It's the second week of #napowrimo2026 and my creative well is feeling low, but that's okay cause this is an exercise in getting things written regardless of whether the inspiration hits perfectly. #poetry #writingcommunity

9.4.2026 - Untitled

My colleague wishes me a Happy Easter.
I try talking about my Passover plans without
spitting up a leviathan
in pieces,
stinking
of salt,
iron, white
phosphor.

It's rude to do vivisections at the office.

171

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Todays #napowrimo poem started from today's prompt from @hiitssky on Instagram, then I let myself get weird with it. Featuring stolen lyrics from 'Dumai' by @danielkahn.bsky.social #poetry #writingcommunity #napowrimo2026

Poem where stanzas are arranged with the 'Down' stanzas on the left side of the page and the 'Up' stanzas on the right side.

(First 'Down' stanza:)

" the river valley
carved from run-off
from the building works
concrete bedrock, sawdust silt
splits off from itself, rejoins
Tigris and Euphrates"

(First 'Up' stanza:)

"white dead god bronchioles
the birds who nest in them
their calls turned to words
in the machine between
twenty, twenty
follow-me, follow-me"

(Both stanzas meet in a centre-aligned line)

"wheat, wheat, wheat"

(Second 'Down' stanza')

"grown by tiny civilisations
my feet devour the sun
the sun on wet tarmac
a burnt offering smell
the machine loops a song"

(Second 'Up' stanza)

"rerouting the river
English > Yiddish
ikh zeh, ikh zeh
nishto, nishto,
vemen, vemen, vemen"

(Stanzas meet up in the centre again)

"vemen zol dos land gehern?
dumai, dumai, dumai"

042

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

#napowrimo day 5. Written between 3 and 5 a.m., because sometimes it's like that. I'm still not sure if I'm capable of writing a villanelle I like, but this one comes closest. #napowrimo2026 #writingcommunity #poetry #villanelle

Text:

5.4.2026 - A Mathematic Proof For Pain

What perfect signs could I use to explain
this howling mass of signals, deaf and blind?
I lack a mathematic proof for pain.

At three a.m it rattles through my brain,
that if I just tried hard enough I'd find
the perfect signs I could use to explain.

So I pick up my chalk and try again
to scratch a trap for screams to be confined.
I’ll craft a mathematic proof for pain.

For all I've raked myself against this vein,
somewhere in these depths, yet to be mined,
lie perfect signs I could use to explain.

When the calculations all are plain,
they can't deny it once it's been defined.
I need a mathematic proof for pain.

But every time that fatal gap remains,
between the universes of our minds.
What perfect signs could I use to explain
there is no mathematic proof for pain?

081

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

#napowrimo poem for day 4. Prompt from promptsbyjasmine on Instagram. #poetry #writingcommunity #napowrimo2026

Text:

4.4.2026 - Small Talk

If you have a car that runs smoothly, you can go for years
never making it past small talk. But if it rattles, groans,
makes that clunk a few too many times to ignore, if it
refuses to let you forget its shuddering physicality,
you have to spend time with the hood up, asking questions
like why does this loose bolt make everything shake?
or does this part even do anything?
or what is our purpose?
or are we trapped in a web of cause and effect that only seems random from the inside?
and by the end you'll still have a neurotic mess of a machine
but at least you'll understand each other better now.

060

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

#napowrimo draft poem for today, based on the www.napowrimo.net prompt. This one will definitely want some work before I'm happy with it, but that can wait for a day when I have more brain to work with. #napowrimo2026 #writingcommunity #poetry

Text:

3.4.2026 - Exterminator

The man who came to kill things in my house
wore corduroy trousers held up with suspenders
and when I asked if he had to use poison,
the lines spidering from his eyes rearranged
in the shape of an apology. 'I've never seen a dirty rat,'
he said as he shone a torch into the dusty corners
of my basement flat, and before I could explain
the cardboard taped over the skirting boards,
the plates piled as an offering to the future,
the shopping bags left in the hallway the day my hip
turned to concrete halfway back from the shops,
he stopped me. 'You've done everything right.'

010

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

My poem for #napowrimo2026 day 1 is one that's going to take some work before I'm happy sharing it, so for now have my day 2. #napowrimo #poetry #writingcommunity

Text:

The Wicked Child

The wicked child says: ‘Whatever does this mean to you?’
(Trad. Passover proverb)

Sharp teeth, sharp tongue, sharp edge,
sword who bites the hand that tries to wield it,
back straight, eyes burning, finger pointing,
pointing at the fingers dripping wine from a cup,
ten drops for ten plagues
what does this mean,
in the age of daily genocides what does ten drops mean,
better to tip the jug, flood the room
what does it mean to you,
you who is not me, who can’t be me
when you tell me we were slaves but now are free,
who is this ‘we’ you would wrap me in,
like the Red Sea slamming shut?

170

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Doing sponsored poems again for #napowrimo2026. Send me a receipt of a £10 donation to one of my chosen charities and request a theme for me to write a poem on. Donation links in comments. #poetry #napowrimo #nationalpoetrywritingmonth #writingcommunity

Text:

Sponsored poems for NaPoWriMo

National Poetry Writing Month is here again. Last year I wrote some poems as sponsored ones; this year I'd like to do that again.

How this works:

1. You send me a screenshot of the receipt of a donation of £10 or more, dated 31/03/2026 or later, to one of the following charities:

- Mermaids UK
- Disability Rights UK
- Palestinian Children's Relief Fund
(Donation links in caption)

2. You request a subject / theme for a poem.

3. I will write a poem on that theme in April.

Disclaimers:

- I will be posting most of the poems to social media. If your sponsored poem contains sensitive details about you personally, I will ask your permission to post it first. The same applies to submitting it for publication.

- My interpretation of your requested theme might not be the same as yours. The theme may end up being a jumping off point for a relatively unrelated poem. Poetry is surprising sometimes.

- In the unlikely event of me getting more than 30 requests, it'll be first-sent-first-served.

You can send me your receipt and requested theme via DMs or email them to beccacpmiles@gmail.com

151

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

I'm back in the archives (The Times this time) and I keep getting jump-scared by the name of this play from 1931.

040

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

I would like to pinch his cheeks

010

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

When the group chat's gotten downright טמא

Discord screen shot reading:

"Alright, I'm off to bed, none of any of these words are in the Talmud (not even the Midrash), we need Moshiach now, I'm gonna go hide in the Chabad tunnels, I'm out of Jewish memes, good night"

1112

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Would you keep reading from this opening? Tentatively having another go at my novel 'Frankenstein's Golem. #amwriting #writingcommunity #speculativefiction

Text:

“Why doesn't your father come himself?” asked the porter at Ingolstadt University.

Because he's dead beneath the ground, and has been less than a week, yet instead of sitting shiva here I am chasing up his debts.

I didn't say that, because as useless as my father had been, he did leave me with a few good lessons. One of them was to never let a goy know your bargaining position, especially if it's a weak one. I didn't know if the porter would know the ins and outs of Jewish residency permits, if he could figure out that my time left in Ingolstadt was limited by the Prince’s patience. But why risk it?

“He’s busy,” I replied, unblinking.

There, let him think me the messenger of an important scholar with little time on his hands, rather than the beggar daughter of a dead madman.

440

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Would you keep reading from this opening? Tentatively having another go at my novel 'Frankenstein's Golem. #amwriting #writingcommunity #speculativefiction

010

Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

If I get literally nothing else done today, at least I achieved a killer bilingual pun.

A screenshot of a discord exchange -

User 1:
Lost in the (cheese) sauce)
The fondue, as it were
Wait
Hang on I gotta google something so I can know if a pun works

User 2:
I adore you

User 1:
(in all caps) PERDU DANS LA FONDUE

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

My new phone case is splendidly decorated thanks to @margueritekenner.bsky.social and @alasdairstuart.com's generous gift of stickers 😁

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Didn't expect to write a #napowrimo poem today but this one wanted to exist. No prompt but the general horrors. CW for internalised misogyny / cissexism #napowrimo2025 #poem #writingcommunity

Text:

24.4.2025 – tbd

Forgive me, my love. You often stroke
the fine hairs on my chin. I stopped shaving
to give you more to play with. Today,
in the ladies’ toilet, I saw a stranger’s eyes flick down and up again. My mind
betrayed me. It might be safer
(in these times)
to try and look more
“biological”.

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Another sponsored #napowrimo poem, this time by my friend Teddy who asked for one about our LARP characters Adeline and Solomon. Yiddish terms: "Meyn teyerer" = "my dear" "schmattes" = "rags, made from scraps" #napowrimo2025 #poetry #writingcommunity

Text:

23.4.2025 - ADELINE AND SOLOMON

Meyn teyerer, why do you visit me
in this smoky city so far from where
our wedding was blessed? In Odessa,
your eyes were black as the clay
on the banks of the Dnieper. Here,
they are brown like your rye bread,
which I have not tasted in years, and here
is your hand on my chest, fixing a button
on my sooty schmattes jacket, and you say
I look thin and tired. But teyerer, why is
your voice in the throat of a woman
who never spoke Yiddish before, who
looks at me with such soft sadness,
when I call her by your name?

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Today's #napowrimo poem is another sponsored one. My friend Jenna requested one about her LARP character Juniper, and since I play a poet in that game I decided to write it in-character. #napowrimo2025 #poetry #writingcommunity

Text:

22.4.2025 - OBSERVATIONS OF A PAINTER AT WORK (II)

An image sparks your mind and electrifies
your mouth, vitality twitching in your grin.
Sketchbook on your lap, you pull your smile in,
as you do when putting lipstick on.
Bent over an unruly canvas, you bite your lip
with such ferocity it makes me flinch,
as if you were digging into my own flesh.
When satisfied, your lips curl back, revealing
your tongue’s pink tip between your bright teeth.
Belladonna, you need not tell me
how your work progresses. You have done it
without uttering a word. Even so: tell me again.

J.B, 1931

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Ohhhh there was some sapphic drama going down in 1931. (I'm back on British Newspaper Archives. Send a search party if I'm not back in a week.)

A screenshot of an old newspaper, text reading:

SO far as lies in my power, my contribution to the Garbo- Dietrich controversy shall be reasoned, impartial, and judicious. Having many years ago done my bit in the

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

Today's sponsored #Napowrimo poem is for my friend Wol, who picked the topic. #napowrimo2025 #poetry #writingcommunity

Text:

21.4.2025 - MAENAD

(For Olwen)

She stands with arms outspread,
screaming hideous delight to a world
that wants her dead and for a second
I see snakes coiling round her head,
smell the blood of tyrants ripped apart
by prey they failed to fear, hear the drums
thumping in my chest, and their rhythm
is the rhythm of her defiant roar:
WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY.
WE WILL NOT GO AT ALL.

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

Another sponsored poem for trans rights. My friend Jess requested the topic of Injustice. Felt appropriate to bump it up the list for today. #napowrimo2025 #napowrimo #poems #writingcommunity

Text:

20.4.2025 - INJUSTICE

When a howl is clawing up your throat,
listen. Your lungs hold more love
than your heart. They will warn you
when the wolf’s jaws have got
your flock by the neck. Don't forget:
the first lesson you ever learned
was how to scream.

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

This Napowrimo poem is dedicated to @elliesparrowart.bsky.social, who bought a sponsored poem slot by donating to a trans rights charity. Ellie gave me free reign so I did an ekphrastic poem based on one of their paintings (linked below). www.elliesparrowart.com/portfolio/or...

Text:
19.4.2025 - CHANGE

(For Ellie Sparrow)

I saw a rock face smile
as it split apart. Its stone lips,
its mossy brows, shifted with
a crack that echoed in my bones.
Its eyelid boulders rolled back
and let a rivulet flow down
its carved cheeks. A glowing fissure
opened wide, and from the wound
escaped a winged figure, who left
its broken mountain prison smiling,
far below.

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Little #napowrimo poem for today. Jumped off from the prompt "Write about your favourite meal/snack" from hiitssky on Instagram. #poetry #napowrimo2025 #writingcommunity

Text:

17.4.2025 - VESTIGE

Under siege, I retreat to the heartland
of my eating habits. Crackers and jelly.
Dry / wet. Snap / slurp. Ying / yang.

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Back to #napowrimo after taking a break to be violently ill for a few days. Todays is from the prompt "What is the light you're walking towards?" #poetry #napowrimo2025 #writingcommunity

Text:
16.4.2025 - IT'S NOT ONE LIGHT

it's scattered pinpricks in the dark,
flickering in and out, sputtering
candles with hands cupped around,
lighting off each other when
the wind blows them out, trusting
there'll be enough to keep
the constellation going.

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Becca Miles @rubecso.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Today's #napowrimo poem is prompted by me getting Olaria Olara by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird stuck in my head. #napowrimo2025 #poetry #writingcommunity

Text:

9.4.2025 - [TBD]

(After Daniel Kahn)

Olaria olara,
daffodils and fa-la-la,
oh the daffodils are growing on the verges,
I can see them through the window of the train.
Spring is here and soon it will be Pesach,
and in Gaza bombs are falling once again.

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