THE JUNE, 2025 30/30 PROJECT

Welcome to the 30/30 Project, an extraordinary challenge and fundraiser for Tupelo Press, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary press. Each month, volunteer poets run the equivalent of a “poetry marathon,” writing 30 poems in 30 days, while the rest of us “sponsor” and encourage them every step of the way.

The volunteer poets for May are Joanna Grant, Judit Hollos, Zach Jauptman, Brice Maiurro, Kimberly O’Connor, Michael Schad, Kashinna Singh, and Elizabeth Wolf!

If you’d like to volunteer for a 30/30 Project month, please fill out our application here and warm up your pen!

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Day 31 / Poem 31

ABOUT 30/30 PROJECT

WHERE DO ALUMNI PUBLISH THEIR WORK

PREVIOUS MONTH

HERE’ S TO PRAYERS THAT HAVEN’T BEEN ANSWERED  / Allison Creighton

A cento with lines from Ian Doumit, , RJ Ingram, Dara Laine, Heather McClelland,  Lottë Mitchell
Reford, Aileen Valca, Edytta Wojnar, and Allison Creighton

When all directions were no direction at all —
I drove only by night,
counting blue streetlights.

I dream I am between countries.
How the world glows.

The wind arranges the seeds,
the smell of wheatfields,
and the sound of dirt.

In this life we’re a cloud of dust.

A secret door opens. Is anyone there?
I am moving to the past.
A kind of undoing.

I greet you with white blankets of snow.
You are my moon.
We dream in the daylight
in a silent gray language.
I want you closer,
but your wings are too wide —

Once more let’s meet.
I will be the boat
made from the depths of your silence,

water so clear you see to the bottom.

I learned to play the flute for you,
like summer, refusing to leave.

What feeds this flower
is what comes close,
dances with it nude —
somehow,
you leave a luminous part of yourself.