I Didn’t Wonder

I didn’t wonder
when I sharpened my beak
on the cuttlebone stuck in my cage.

I didn’t wonder
about the cuttlefish,
decomposed and washed up on a beach.

I didn’t wonder
if it needed an artist to carve it
into something new and beautiful.

I didn’t wonder
if it might be a mould for a brooch or pendant —
a fish or even a thing of bone and feather,

a bird like me.

Kim M. Russell, 8^th April 2026

It’s day Eight of NaPoWriMo and our optional prompt is inspired by the poem ‘Poet, No Thanks’ by Jean D’Amérique , which he repeats the phrase “I wasn’t a poet” a several times, while describing other things that he instead claims to have been. Our challenge is to write poems using a simple phrase repeatedly and then making statements that invert or contradict that phrase.

I took a quadrille I wrote for the dVerse Poets Pub prompt on Monday and reworked it to fit this challenge.