The Editors' NPM Project: Our Ongoing Renga

Happy Friday, friends! If you've been keeping up with our National Poetry Month party, you have probably noticed that we're pretty much overjoyed that it's April. But a poetry party just isn't complete without an ongoing project, and today we're introducing ours: a renga!

If you read yesterday's throwback Thursday post, you already know that we've had an interest in the renga for quite some time; however, it's been far too long since we've given it a go again. We figure, in celebration of National Poetry Month, we can go back to our roots and do another renga! Only this time, we're switching things up: we'll be including the traditional couplet (as we discuss in our examination of the renga) instead of simply swapping haikus, and we'll be working on our renga all month long.

Each week, we'll be collaborating to create an ongoing renga, and we'll publish the finished product at the end of the month. [**UPDATE: you can find the complete renga below!**]

So, without further adieu, let's begin!

(Emily writes in green; Alli writes in blue.)

In the morning you
rise, ethereal, from the
golden coast of sleep

each iris reflected in

mine like a pane of stained glass

You exhale slowly––
birds like lungs wheeling somewhere
overhead, out of reach.

We never lived near the sea
until we found sleep in us.

now we wake, awash
in grains of thought; we whisper
to the breeze as we

breathe. We are an island in
the dawn, a hum of the tide

A wave spreads its wings.

The sky yawns so wide we can

count sticky white teeth

and we're adrift in silent

vows to return to this place

I chase your shadow
in the sun. Effervescent
as the tumbling sea

you are my undertow, the

atlas to my everything

We always knew this,

the long and short of our days: 

I will float until

the sea takes us both and we

sink. Call morning our anchor.

The tide beats on, waves
rising somnolent from the
depths of us, and we

expose our impermanence
on the edge of shallow coast.

Dear, all this singing 
to the sea, it makes me love
the shore all the more.

The only truth I whispered
you couldn't hear for the waves.

Sea-sprayed murmurs fall
from your lips. Oceans' foam
floods my mouth like wine

and we're drunk on the sun, on
our solitude in the sea. 

There are no heavens
higher than this brine-soaked bliss
that never sees past

morning tide. But I've come to
it and found myself living.


If I could, I'd keep
the sea a secret from the
world; a tidal

pool cosmos cradled in my
open palms. A gift for you.



Suns sink. The sea rolls
its shoulders, shrugs off our shores.
Years gone with wonder,

like fine, fine sand falling through
my human-heavy fingers.