Reading · Wild Lion*esses Pride by Jay

Wide landscape photograph of the Kalahari Desert in the Northern Cape, South Africa. Dry pale sand and low scrub brush fill the foreground. Scattered acacia trees with dark trunks and dense green canopies spread across the middle ground. A flat horizon line meets two-thirds of open, cloudless pale blue sky. — Kalahari Desert, Northern Cape, South Africa.

Day Twenty-Six of NaPoWriMo — and a small thing worth noting in the margin: yesterday’s Metà Phérein earned the featured spot for today.

Today’s prompt asks for an ars poetica. What keeps you writing. What you think poetry does, or refuses to do.

Mine goes feral.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

ars feralis (the art of going feral)
I write in the language I choose.
Today: English — all jaw and speed,
monosyllable and punch,
the way it fits my thinking
like a good coat in cold air.
German surfaces mid-sentence
when something wants holding
English drops.
Geborgen. That state of shelter
where you remain entirely yourself.
Tomorrow, maybe, Spanish, French, Italian —
whatever the coastline speaks.
I carry all of them mine.
I choose both and neither
and the feral place between,
where neither grammar holds
and something older breathes.
***
A poem, they said, makes a moment permanent.
I say: a poem makes the moment permeable.
Lets the next thing through.
A poem, they said, earns its ending.
I say: a poem knows when to stop
pretending it owns one.
***
I write from a canyon.
The canyon holds every layer —
old red stone, new green lichen,
the side-canyon the map forgot,
the shadow moving
whether or not the sun agrees.
Subscending: going down and through,
touching the old water,
letting it touch back.
The view from the bottom
shows you everything the peak hides.
***
Ars poetica assumes a singular art. One speaker. One tradition. One beautiful object placed on the shelf of the culture.
I carry incompatible dignities. The American who says I matter and means it alone. The German who says wir halten zusammen and means it collectively.
The body belonging to neither, fully — refusing to dissolve into either.
Polysystemisch. Inscribed by more than one hand.
***
I write until the form opens from the inside.
I let the line break where the breath breaks —
sometimes mid-word,
sometimes the white space
carries more than I do.
I write poems my cat approves of.
He sits on the draft:
the oldest editorial method.
I write toward people who know
the cost of staying legible
in a language built for someone else.
I write the way the Leine floods:
slow accumulation, then
the whole field, water, sudden.
***
I answer to myself.
I know my worth.
It arrived with me.
It stays.
***
I want the poem to leave a mark
the way a river leaves a mark —
present in its absence,
visible in what it changed.

First page of a visual poem layout. Title ars feralis (the art of going feral) in bold serif at top left. Two columns of poetry in dark serif font sit against a pale blue Kalahari sky, the landscape visible in the lower third — dry sand, scrub brush, scattered acacia trees stretching to the horizon. — *ars feralis* — page 1. Kalahari Desert, Northern Cape, South Africa. NaPoWriMo Day 26, 2026.

Second page of a visual poem layout. Three columns of poetry in serif font float across a wide open sky above an arid Kalahari landscape with scattered acacia trees. The poem sections read: the Ars poetica / incompatible dignities stanza at top, then three columns below covering the writing practice, the Leine flood image, the sovereignty lines, and the river ending. — *ars feralis* — page 2. Kalahari Desert, Northern Cape, South Africa. NaPoWriMo Day 26, 2026.

As always, Thank you for reading and following.

xo Jay

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Going Feral

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