She Was a Set of Silver Lock-picks
You could never have known her --
she had 2 many names
or 3. After the end, I learned
it was 4.
1 for the way an elegant stitch can //fly//
across open fields of cheat grass
or silk.
2 for the girl she left behind,
motherless.
(No one can be motherless, I hear you say.
So why did the girl tell me, when I called,
“I am motherless.
I have no mother now, what difference
will it be when her body's dead?”
this girl who held her own child, so new it was barely dry.)
The 3rd she
(and here I mean my glorious friend
who I knew only as a pastel of lemons splashed across crimson velvet)
kept for prison.
You ask “What did she leave you?”
A fine sewing machine, scissors sharp as a razor, fat thread in 23 colors, batiks from Senegal,
silks from Thailand, a wooden crate filled with crumbling pastel chalks.
“And what did she burn?”
A house, a heart, at least 3 names. All of it. She burned all of it.
4 I never suspected.
I threatened a priest for her,
crushed morphine and Ativan into paste,
burned her court records,
read nonsense to her as she died,
found homes for her cat and 42 milk crates of Mississippi blues LPs.
but I was left to find 4
(the very first one, honest as being born in Michigan)
in a box with old phone books, canceled checks from 1994, and photos
of a smiling man and
a motherless baby girl
What Inspires You
I am inspired by the conversations I can bring to a poem. The first is always my conversation with myself, my craft, my life. The second is my conversation with the prompt (if there is one) or the spark that catches my heart and sends me to the page. The third conversation is always with that reader who may see my poem and who, I hope, will find something in that poem to value. The world around me, the people, nature, history, and what’s happening in today’s headlines, are all inspiration, and all provide starting points, shards to bring together with craft. It’s how I make sense of the world.
Bio
Sunny Hemphill was born and raised in Brownwood, Texas. Many of her poems reflect her fundamentalist Baptist childhood in a family scarred by lack of education and generational poverty. She studied Journalism at Baylor University on a scholarship, working as a newspaper reporter and freelance journalist during her career. She has a BA in English Literature from Arizona State University and now lives in Washington State, halfway between Spokane and Seattle. She returned to writing poetry after suffering a devastating spinal cord injury in 2016.
Find the Spring 2026 Issue HERE
Previous NPM 2026 poets
| April 1 | Amy Forstadt |
| April 2 | Annette Sisson |
| April 3 | Beth Kanell |
| April 4 | Bonnie Proudfoot |
| April 5 | Charles Stringer |
| April 6 | D. Dina Friedman |
| April 7 | David Colodney |
| April 8 | Deanna Ludwin |
| April 9 | Eileen Pettycrew |
| April 10 | Felice Alexandra |
| April 11 | Grace Massey |
| April 12 | Hallie Fogarty |
| April 13 | Isabel Cristina Legarda |
| April 14 | Jon Yungkans |
| April 15 | Kim Welliver |
| April 16 | Laura Foley |
| April 17 | Laurie Kuntz |
| April 18 | Marissa Glover |
| April 19 | Michelle McMillan-Holifield |
| April 20 | Miriam Sagan |
| April 21 | Roy Mason |
| April 22 | Sarah Banks |
| April 23 | Sean Whalen |
| April 24 | Shutta Crum |
| April 25 | Simona Carini |
| April 26 | Sunny Hemphill |