Mirror, Gratitude, and a Call to Donate to Tupelo Press
Some writing days arrive like a knock at the door. Others arrive like a reflection you were not expecting to see.
Today’s poem for Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project is called “Mirror.” The title felt simple at first, almost too simple. Then the poem began to ask what mirrors usually ask when we are willing to stand still: What are you looking at? What are you avoiding? What has changed while you were busy calling yourself the same?
I’m sharing the poem below, along with a note of gratitude and a renewed invitation to support Tupelo Press.
Today’s 30/30 poem is called “Mirror”
One of the strange gifts of writing a poem a day is that I do not have much time to outwit myself.
There is not enough room to wait for the perfect idea, or to revise my way into distance before anyone sees the work. I sit down, listen for what is present, and follow the first honest thread I can find. Some days the thread is memory. Some days it is image. Some days it is a sound, a phrase, a question, a half-seen thing in the room.
Today it was the mirror.
Not the grand symbolic mirror, not the fairy-tale mirror on the wall, not the mirror as a tidy metaphor for truth. More like the ordinary mirror most of us encounter in passing. The one above the sink. The one in the hallway. The one we glance at before leaving the house. The one that catches us when we are tired, worried, softened, amused, or caught off guard.
A mirror is not kind or cruel by itself. It reflects. The rest is what we bring to it.
Here is an excerpt.
Hunger reverberates
through the mouth’s tunnel
to the womb.
Read the rest at Tupelo's 30/30 page.
Gratitude for the people who have already given
I want to pause and say a heartfelt thank-you to Veronica Kornberg and Lisa Bevivino, who donated through my fundraising page.
Every donation matters. That is not something I say as a polite phrase before moving on to the next sentence. In a fundraiser like this, each gift carries real weight. It says yes to poetry, yes to small presses, yes to the often quiet work of keeping literary culture alive beyond the commercial center.
Veronica, thank you for giving so generously and for being part of this month’s circle of support.
Lisa, thank you as well, and thank you for making your donation in exchange for a poem on a topic you suggested. That kind of exchange feels beautifully in the spirit of the 30/30 Fundraiser. A gift becomes a prompt. A prompt becomes a poem. A poem becomes a little part of the public record of the month. The act of giving does not just support the press from a distance. It helps generate new work.
That is one of the things I love most about this project. It reminds me that poetry is not only solitary. Yes, the actual writing may happen alone, in the quiet, with a notebook or screen and the day pressing at the window. But the energy around the poem often comes from other people: readers, friends, editors, teachers, small presses, donors, and fellow writers trying to make something true before midnight.
Why Tupelo Press matters
Tupelo Press has long been part of the living ecosystem of contemporary poetry. Small presses do work that is easy to admire and hard to sustain. They publish books that might not fit the narrow demands of large commercial publishing. They take chances on voice, form, subject, and vision. They build a home for poems that need attentive editors and committed readers.
That work is not abstract.
A press like Tupelo helps make it possible for poets to find their way into print, for readers to discover books they might not otherwise encounter, and for literary communities to keep expanding. The books exist because people choose to stand behind them. Editors, designers, staff, volunteers, readers, donors, and writers all become part of the same chain of care.
The 30/30 Fundraiser is one way to support that chain. Participating poets write and share new work each day for a month, while asking friends, family, and readers to contribute to the press. The daily practice creates a sense of momentum. The fundraising gives that momentum a purpose beyond the individual poem.
I am writing each day, but the fundraiser is not really about my discipline. It is about what our collective support can make possible.
The mirror as a writing companion
The more I sat with today’s poem, the more I thought about the strange double motion of a mirror. It shows and withholds at the same time.
It shows the visible surface: face, light, posture, room. It withholds everything underneath unless we let the looking continue. Even then, what we see may not be fixed. A mirror changes with the hour, with the angle, with the room behind us, with the expression we did not know we were wearing.
That feels close to poetry.
A poem often begins with something visible. A mirror. A cup. A bird. A hand. A road. A blue towel on a hook. Then the visible thing starts to open. It becomes a way to ask a deeper question without announcing the question too loudly.
In “Mirror,” I found myself writing toward the idea that we carry many selves at once:
The self we present to the day
The self we inherited from family
The self we practiced becoming
The self we abandoned
The self still waiting to be recognized
A mirror cannot sort those selves for us. A poem cannot solve them either. But poetry can make a space where we let them stand together for a moment.
That is part of why I value this daily practice. It asks me to stop treating poems as rare events that require perfect conditions. A poem can happen in the middle of ordinary life. It can happen beside the sink, in the blur of morning, with errands waiting and messages unanswered. It can happen because someone made a donation and offered a topic. It can happen because a press made a structure that invites poets into daily attention.
What your donation supports
If you have been thinking about donating, I would be grateful if today were the day.
A gift to Tupelo Press through this fundraiser supports independent literary publishing and helps sustain the kind of editorial care that poetry needs. It also encourages the poets participating in 30/30 to keep showing up, one day and one poem at a time.
You do not have to give a large amount for the gift to matter. Small donations add up. They also change the emotional weather of the project. Each donation is a reminder that the poems are not disappearing into silence. Someone is reading. Someone is responding. Someone is saying, keep going.
That matters more than you may know.
If you would like to donate in connection with my 30/30 participation, please visit my fundraising page and make a gift to Tupelo Press there. And if you would like to offer a prompt in the spirit of Lisa’s donation, I would welcome that too. I cannot promise where the poem will go, but I can promise to listen for what the prompt opens.
Thank you for reading and helping the poems continue
This month of writing has reminded me that poems may be made of words, but they are also made of attention, encouragement, and support. The poem on the page is only one part of the story. Around it are the people who read, the people who give, the people who suggest a subject, and the people who keep small presses alive.
Today, I am grateful for the mirror, for the poem it helped me find, and for the community forming around this fundraiser.
Thank you again to Veronica Kornberg and Lisa Bevivino for donating through my page. Thank you to everyone who has read along, sent a kind word, or considered making a gift.
If poetry has ever given you a clearer way to see, please consider donating to Tupelo Press. Your support helps make room for the next book, the next poet, the next reader, and tomorrow’s poem.
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