In a recent installment of our Ten Questions series, Maya C. Popa talks about how her palindrome poem “One Way or Another” became the opening poem of her collection If You Love That Lady (Norton, 2026) and the first one she remembers writing for it. “Its back-and-forth, snake-swallowing-its-own-tail quality would end up being emblematic of both those years and my experience assembling the manuscript,” she says. This week, write a palindrome poem in which the last half mirrors the first half. You may choose to adhere strictly to a set of lines, reversing the order halfway through the piece with no alterations, or choose to divert from this structure while keeping the halves of the poem a reflection, be it structural or figurative. How might symmetry serve as an embodiment of your poem’s themes?
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