Welcome, Children of Darkness—Last Halloween Prompts for the Year

To celebrate Halloween, let’s look at Gladys Oaks’s “The Grave Digger” for some cheerful inspiration. Yikes!

For your first prompt, write a poem or short story from the perspective of a gravedigger.

Your second prompt is to use the line “The stars are but the eyeballs of the dead” for a ghostline, your first line that you remove after finishing a poem. Be sure to credit the poet for your inspiration with an after statement or in your title.

The third prompt is to write a response poem or story to the ending couplet, “A world is but a mote waiting to die, / Floating between great ribs of looming sky.”

For another prompt, write a poem or story using the following words: “lighted,” “force,” “wrench,” “curling,” “brittle,” “sapless,” “whirls,” “hollow,” “ribs” and “looming.”

For the last prompt, write a poem that could be included in Nursery Rhymes for Children of Darkness, whatever that means to you. Bonus points for a sonnet.

Bonus prompt: write a story based on this summoning circle.

Final bonus prompt: write whatever this photo inspires.

Good luck writing! Have fun!

Hauntings—Prompts Inspired by Danika Stegeman LeMayn

It is my favorite season—cool weather, clear nights, carved pumpkins and spooky decor—so let’s have another poem to haunt your thoughts. Thanks to Han VanderHart for sharing!

For the first prompt, explain how you know you are loved using supernatural phenomena, perhaps a beam encircling you from something above you in the night sky, a voice that whispers your name from an empty room, a pair of eyes glowing outside your window. Next add a scientific fact or piece of common knowledge and then end by connecting this fact to the supernatural.

The second prompt is to use the lines “It surrounds us / even if we can’t / see it” as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line after finishing the poem and credit the poet for your inspiration.

The next is to write a poem or story using the following list of words: “haunted,” “radio,” “flickering,” “folded,” “square,” “emit,” “light” and “surrounds.”

The next prompt is more of an exercise. Take the poem’s lines as a kind of Mad Lib, replacing the nouns and verbs with their antonyms. If any of the lines you’ve recreated have a friction for you, take that line and make it the first line of a poem or story and continue from there.

Good luck writing! Have fun!

Ghosts and Ghostlines—Prompts inspired by Andrea Cohen

As always, Andrea Cohen takes my breath away in just a few words.

For the first prompt, write a story or poem from the perspective a ghost who is struggling to communicate with the loved ones. What does the ghost want to say? What methods does the ghost choose if speaking is no longer possible?

Think on the modern usage of ghosting and its origin and constraint how the monster in Shelly’s tale is mistakenly called Frankenstein (yet truly is the monster). What other actions are named for monsters or mythical creatures and write from the creature’s perspective.

The third prompt is to write a poem or story using the following word list: “cavalier,” “language,” “silence,” “ghost,” “will,” “tell,” “last,” “mean” and “leave.” Try to switch the part of speech from verbs to nouns and vice versa.

For the next prompt, write a list poem of “the last thing / we mean” and let your title explain who the “we” is.

The last prompt is to write what you mean to do before you or your narrator in a story means to do before leaving the listener.

Bonus prompt: For this a rather wispy moon, write a poem or story about a dreamy, soft spoken werewolf or set a horror story in landscape of mist and dreary swamp with an obscenely cheerful, fast talking protagonist.

Good luck! Have fun writing!

Casserole This—Prompts Inspired by Steve Ramirez

It is spooky season, and I am gnawing on my liver in envy for Steve Ramirez’s poem. Damn it, I grew up on Midwestern casseroles, and I won’t ever have a line that good!

For the first prompt, make a list of twelve creatures and monsters. Choose whichever two cause you friction, or rely on fate/happenchance, perhaps by numbering the list and then randomly rolling dice. Write a poem or story about the possible interaction, beginning each stanza or paragraph with an “as if” statement. See where you end up.

The second prompt is to write a romance about an alien or otherworldly beauty. Make gills other mouths to kiss, the Mothman’s wings another set of handholds in moonlight, fangs glinting jewels to press against the throat.

The third prompt is to write a story or poem around an image of a town as the food its residents consume—like a casserole or barbecue or donut. Let the townsfolk become a chorus to the protagonist, an outsider to their customs and expectations. What spice or flavor is added. Use a family recipe if you like.

Next, write a list poem beginning with the ghostline “when girls thought they were the color of the sea. Remember to erase the line and credit the poet.

For the last prompt, write a poem or story from the following word list: “convenience,” “transcends,” “tiptoe,” “seesaw,” “weight,” “revoke,” “fuel,” “oceans,” “landscape” and “remember.”

Bonus prompt: write a story or poem with this humanoid as your protagonist/speaker.

Good luck writing! Have fun!

National Poetry Day with John Wick and Kyra Wilder!!!

It’s time to celebrate with your favorite poems, with new poems, with poems you’ve read and poems you‘ve written. All are good. To celebrate poetry’s holiday, choose a line from a favorite poem or from one you read today and use that line as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line and credit the poet.

For a second prompt, choose a poem to respond to as if in conversation or as a call and answer. Again, credit the poet and poem in your title or in an after statement.

If you want more prompts and possibly a new poem, here is a great one by Kyra Wilder that someone shared today. I didn’t know I needed a poem about John Wick but now I do!

For the first prompt inspired by Kyra Wilder, choose another character from an action movie and describe how and why the characters is tired or melancholy or mistaken or even blissful or learning.

The second prompt is take one scene from a movie and describe it to another who you wish were there to watch it with you.

For the third prompt, write a poem or story from the following word list: “split,” “cracked,” “listing,” “glissade,” “tiles,” “relief,” “thimblefuls,” “theory,” “diaphanous” and “swollen.”

The last prompt is to write a list poem describing how you want to be sad or angry or cheerful but with special effects or a kind of Hollywood glamour.

Bonus prompt: since it is October, write a horror-themed adventure in Disneyland or its mirror image in the water.

Have fun reading poems and writing today!!!

Burning—Prompts Inspired by Rae Armantrout

Short post today as my brain is a wooly sheep lost on a hillside, and a short poem for a short post!

For the first prompt, begin with an image that in a separate stanza that connects to an emotion. If you wish, follow the format of this poem by inserting a time indicator as a separate line/stanza or with the third stanza that gives speaker’s emotion. Use a famous quote. Make your last line reinterpret the quote and refer to the emotion and image described in previous stanzas.

The second prompt is to write a list poem of burning images. End with a famous quote, perhaps this one by Emerson or another of your choice.

Using “having nowhere to go, persists” as a ghostline for a poem or short story. Remember to erase the line afterwards and credit the poet.

The final prompt is write a poem or story using the following words: “blown,” “end,” “stem,” “lamp,” “blend,” “longing,” “persists,” “star,” and “burns.” Notice how much of the poem consists of one-syllable words. If you want an additional exercise, switch these words with polysyllabic synonyms where possible.

For a bonus prompt, write a poem or story based on this photo but alternate the settings or perspectives to explore how fireworks, rockets explosions, in the night can be celebrations or attacks. If possible shift from differing perspectives or settings to explore that duality.

Good luck! Have fun writing!

“When I was truly great”—Prompts Inspired by Hanif Abdurraqib

I was lucky enough to get to hear Hanif Abdurraqib read at an event. I hope to again one day and hope I will get to hear this poem in person. I am feeling the passing of time and possibilities in my bones. Although no one could say I was once great, I might have been called nice until I realized that niceness never stopped a slur from being dropped in a crowded room nor kept someone I love safe. I sometimes miss the girl I was though.

Use the title’s format but substituting a different sports team or a famous musical group or an event as the first prompt for a poem or short story. I would probably choose the Chicago Cubs, a team long considered cursed by a goat and even a black cat and that never failed to disappoint my relatives when I was growing up.

The second prompt is to write a list poem of reasons you are no longer great or when you will be again, the more surreal the better.

For the third prompt, write a poem or story using the following word list: “mean,” “mountain,” “dust,” “shoreline,” “candles,””sugar,” “drown,” “passing,” “decade” and “incessant.”

For the last prompt, use the line “I just woke up one day and I was a still photo in everyone else’s home but my own“ for a ghostline. Remember to erase the line after you finish the poem or story and credit the poet.

Bonus prompt: describe yourself or a character as a dimming candle as the starting point of a poem or story.

Good luck writing! Have fun!

The Terror in Beauty—Prompts Inspired by Rilke

Along with the biblically accurate angels with a thousand eyes, angels have terrified me, as does perfection and all true beauty. What else splinters the lungs like those transcendent moments of sky and land mirrored in a lake with shifting hues my human eye cannot accurately define? So I am grateful to Rilke and to David Rubin for sharing this poem.

For the first prompt, name the angel who would hear your cry and write a poem or story about what happens next.

The second prompt is to use “For beauty is but the beginning of terror” as a ghostline, remembering to erase the line after you finish the poem and crediting the poet for your inspiration.

The third prompt is to write a list poem of what has declined to destroy you. Or if you prefer, write an essay on surviving beauty.

For the next prompt, write a poem or story using the following word list: “cried,” “hierarchies,” “hear,” “perish,” “power,” “beginning,” “endure,” “awed” and “destroy.”

For an additional prompt, write about a being through whom light shines. What would you give for that light to illuminate your face or hands? What would you sacrifice to make the light pass over you, leaving you in the safe harbor of concealment? What prayers would you make for either outcome?

Bonus ekphrastic prompt: describe this image in a poem or story.

Good luck writing! Have fun!

Lazarus Rising onto the Web—Prompts Inspired by Kelli Russell Agodon

I spent a week in Minnesota, weeding and painting after attending a lovely wedding. It was great spending time with family, and I needed to feel the sun and cool breezes rather than sitting in waiting rooms and hospitals, worrying. So while I am still behind on reading and writing, I have better grounding. This gorgeous poem by Kelli Russell Agodon embodies my sense that I may bounce back from the last few weeks. It does seem appropriate that my screenshot is all cockeyed though.

For the first prompt, write a “ransom letter to an old self” in whatever form that takes.

The second prompt is to write in a poem or essay about a moment you interacted with a small creature—bird or insect, spider or lizard or frog—and how that interaction mimics some aspect of your life. Or make up a story about meeting or affecting a fictional creature.

The third prompt is to write a poem or story using the following word list: “leaves,” “squeezed,” “hourglass,” “slip,” “pain,” “knot,” suncatcher,” “web,” “rising,” “numb,” and “center.”

For the fourth, describe “normal” as something other than a box, or write a list poem of what “normal” feels like to you or how it has been dictated.

The last prompt is to write a poem for story from the spider’s perspective.

For a bonus prompt, write about the spider in this photo.

For an additional prompt, write as if climbing this monument were to return to your center.

(For more context if you want it, the previous photo is from staircase of the monument and statue of “Hermann the German” from Hermann Heights Park in New Ulm, MN.)

Have fun writing! Good luck!

Open Fields—Prompts Inspired by Ross Gay

Yes, I am late again with the blog. My head was too full of the beep of machines, the scuff of shoes on linoleum as nurses come in to draw blood again. Even when I leave the hospital, I know I will eventually have to return and next time we may not get her there in time. I want to leave those hallways behind to run in fields of clover and vetch, the sky an endless plain above.

Perhaps for these reasons (and its beauty) I turned to this wonderful poem by the Ross Gay for that escape and the imagery it gave me.

For the first prompt, write a poem or story about transforming into another creature. What would you give up; by what process or sense would you choose to embody this other life form?

The second prompt—similar to the first—is to write about knowing the experiences of another. What would you learn from seeing from behind another’s eyes? What would the world look like below as you drifted along thermals or above you from the depths of the dark seas? Most of all, how would you gave this knowledge? What is the entry into the other’s world?

The third prompt is to use the line “from its mouth made me” as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line after you’ve written the poem and credit the poet in an after statement or in the title.

The last is to write a story or poem using the following word list: “belly,” “bit,” “maw,” “bloom,” “brook,” “sheen,” “torches,“ “knives,” “glisten,” and “cast.”

This poem is from his third collection catalog of unabashed gratitude.

For a writing exercise, describe the color and texture of gratitude, its density and half-life.

For a bonus prompt, write an essay, poem or story inspired by the carving and/or the text (photo taken in a Portland train station). Or write about the photo below (taken in Borrego Springs). What would the world feel to a horse of metal hooves and wire mane? Would the rare drops of rain be cooling relief or an unwelcome thick corrosion of the coat?

Have fun reading! I hope you have done better on the Sealey Challenge than I have this year.

Good luck with your writing!

The Position of the Sun and You—Prompts Inspired by Jonathan Humanoid

I hope you are all reading tons of poetry collections. Alas, I am just not able to concentrate on anything while I am recovering, so I am posting about a poem and a book I read previously (but of course still love so much so that I wrote one of the blurbs). I find the opening image and the mirroring of positions and repetition/replacement of the sun with the speaker and the intended audience powerful and intriguing.

For the first prompt, center a poem or story around an adage or aphorism as the poet did here with the metaphor of the sun. Here is a good starting list of aphorisms: https://www.yourdictionary.com/articles/examples-aphorisms. If you want a little more direction, write about the aphorism, “Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom” with imagery of the moon.

The second prompt is to write a four-stanza poem addressed to another person with the first stanza (quatrain or any other) opening with an image that joins the speaker and intended listener, the second developing that image or natural phenomena, the third connecting the image to an emotional or philosophical truth and the fourth reconnecting the image and emotion to the relationship between speaker and the “you” of the poem.

For the third prompt, write a list poem beginning with the line “This isn’t a love poem” as the title or first line (remembering to credit the poet regardless) for what this poem is not.

For the fourth, write a poem or story using the following word list: “sky,” “open,” “letting,” “settle,” “sun,” “still,” “closer,” “perspective,” “trouble” and “turn.”

If you would like to read more, here is the publisher’s link: http://www.arroyosecopress.org/books.html#thumb.

Bonus prompt, write a poem or story about using the following photo for inspiration.

Good luck with the Sealey Challenge. Have fun reading and writing this month!!!

Rain and Recommendation—Prompts Inspired by Ilya Kaminsky

So I haven’t been reading nor writing this month in spite of good intentions. I hope you all are doing much better on the Sealey Challenge than I. I have high hopes for next week though!

Since my attention span is short and Sunday is for small poems, let’s turn to another of my favorites by Ilya Kaminsky.

For the first prompt, use an image or scientific fact or natural phenomenon to be your letter of recommendation in a short poem. Let your final line or stanza make the bridge.

The second prompt is to use the lines “yet I believe / against all evidence” for a ghostline for a poem or story. Remember to erase the line and give credit to the poet. Or use these lines as your title instead, again crediting the poet.

For the third, write a list poem of what has eaten you; provide fractions or percentages. What remains?

Bonus prompt: write a conversation between this fish and the centered moss-covered stone in a poem or story.

Good luck reading this month and writing! Have fun!

It’s August! Sealey Challenge!

Every August, try to read a poetry book a day. The book can be a chapbook or a full length or even a book you want to revisit. Best of all, take a selfie and share your recommendations with others and check out what others are posting to discover new poets. For great recommendations, check out the website: https://www.thesealeychallenge.com/.

And don’t forget there is even a bingo game board! Don’t forget to post and tag for a chance to win a book!

And, yes, I am posting this a day behind because I am starting a day behind. But I have several chapbooks to read, and even if I don’t finish a book every day, just whittling down my to-read stack feels great! I am starting with John Brantingham’s Gone Back to Wild!

Have fun reading!

“leftover duck”—Prompts Inspired by Tom Snarsky and John Ashbery

I am reposting this since I apparently was very tired and couldn’t read properly—two of the poems are from Tom Snarsky and two are from John Ashbery (and autocorrect changed the spelling of Ashbery’s name). Wow, that’s embarrassing! I need to write prompts during the day from now on!

Today is John Ashbery’s birthday, so let’s celebrate with two of his poems and to Tom Snarsky who is a great poet to follow. I posted all four but only want to focus on one. The other three are bonus poems for tonight.

This poem in particular resonated with me—its imagery and that final line.

The first prompt is to use the poem’s first line as a ghostline. See where it takes you. Remember to delete the line after you’ve finished your poem and credit the poet in an after statement or in the title.

The second is to Mad Lib the second couplet for a writing exercise: _______ is an extended metaphor for / ________, which is half of what _______ does. / The other half is _______ for ________. Now write a poem or short story that develops this idea. Don’t use the lines themselves or do so only as the jumping off point from which you later delete.

For a third prompt, write a poem or story using the following word list: “coats,” “layered,” “unblended,” “shade,” “cool,” “angle,” “brush,” “extended,” “half” and “light.”

Here is the other Snarksky poem and the two Ashbery poems.

For the next prompt, write a poem or story about miscommunication that uses technical terms from a scientific field. Throw in a conspiracy for fun.

For the prompt based on this poem, write a poem or story using the following word list: “logic,” “climate,” “tender,” “turns,” “mountain,” “pouring,” “monument,” “wind, “starching” and “broke.”

The next prompt is to answer this poem’s repeated question (but without the ducks).

The final prompt is print out each of these poems, cut out each word separately and arrange them as you into new lines.

Bonus prompt: write a poem or story based on this photo.

Good luck! Have fun!

For “when the plot calls”—Prompts Inspired by Lisel Mueller

Here is a powerful poem by Lisel Mueller. Notice how everyday language is transformed by its arrangement, how visual it can become with a skilled writer. Thank you, Anthony Robinson, for sharing!!!

For the first prompt, use the last lines “Inside the house / the mirrors burn when I pass” for a ghostline. See where that line takes you. Remember to erase the line after you’ve written your poem and credit the poet with an “after Lisel Mueller” statement or another acknowledgment.

The second prompt is a Mad Libs writing exercise: replace the nouns and verbs with their opposites. If you discover a line you particularly like, use that line as your very own ghostline for a poem or short story.

The third prompt is another writing exercise, creating a poem structured similar to this one. Use your title to indicate time: night or sunset or perhaps the day of the week or a season, whatever you like. Your first line(s) will introduce an action as if it part of a script or story (that happens or doesn’t happen in the aforementioned period of time). The second line(s) will refer to the time introduced in the title with perhaps additional detail (season or time of day or a month) and offers an action. The third line(s) will reinforce the theme of plot, story, fate, etc. and will either prevent the action or erase its consequence. The last line(s) will end on an evocative image. Again this is just for practice and the resulting poem may be too similar to the original for publication.

For a final prompt, write a story or poem that uses the following word list: “even,” “calls,” “stone,” “summer,” “outside,” “opens,” “inside,” “mirrors” and “pass.” Try to switch the parts of speech/word classes.

Bonus prompt: write a story or poem based on this photo.

Good luck writing! Have fun!

Living Punk—Prompts Inspired by Jessica Walsh

I love this poem by Jessica Walsh. It feels like an anthem, a beckoning to let my feet thud on the floor and stomp into a new day.

I have never been punk, never pretended or believed myself “cool” or “hot” especially after motherhood changed my perspective and direction, after repeated failures pulled my eyes to ground. No, I am not tough, but I am still here, after I had stopped wanting to be a tourist to my life and decided to live it even though I do it all wrong. I can only hope my daughter will be punk in a similar way—living a long life and proving the doubters wrong.

For the first prompt, write a poem or essay in response to what a loved one has said to you or criticized you for. Like the poet here, use the criticism as part of your title. Remember, you don’t have to be polite unless you plan to show it to them.

The second prompt is to write a list poem of how you demonstrate that you are here to stay: setting money aside for a trip you won’t take until the kids are out of the house, buying a swimsuit at summer’s end for next summer, planting a tree, buying another book for the unread stack, write a to-do list.

For the third prompt, write a story or poem about the decision you (or a character) made to stay alive in spite of it all. What did you (or the protagonist) give up, give away, take or make in order to make that choice possible.

The next prompt is to take a favorite song and weave the lyrics in as the poet does here with “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads.

For the last prompt, write a poem or story using the following word list: “grudges,” “odds,” “role,” “snow,” “steady,” “surrendered,” “bottle,” “bomb,” “nails,” “gas,” “spite” and “teeth.”

Bonus prompt: write a poem or story about this image. Don’t worry, if Katy Perry can repeat “boom, boom, boom” and “moon, moon, moon” you can too.

Good luck writing! Have fun!

For “the hollow mouth at evening’s edge”—Prompts Inspired by Luther Hughes

Let me see the world as making love in the bowing of trees, beauty even in the breakage.

For the first prompt, describe a scene of destruction, and near the end, use the line “What if this were love” and answer how it could be. Be sure to italicize the line or use quotation marks around it and credit the author in your title, such as “with line from Luther Hughes or similar acknowledgement.

The second prompt is to write a love poem to a force of nature—lightning, the tide, a storm surge. What is given back?

For a third prompt, write a poem or story using the following words: “felled,” “hollow,” “humble,” “bowed,” “habit,” “gust,” “chore,” “bargained,” “distance” and “stay.”

The last prompt is to use “if wind bargained for beauty, let go of its kingdom” as a ghostline, using it as a starting point and then erasing it. Do credit the poet in the title or provide an “after Luther Hughes” acknowledgment.

Bonus prompt: write a poem or story using the following photo as its setting or for its mood.

Additional bonus prompt (less bleak one): write a poem or story about bending, but not breaking.

Good luck writing! Have fun!

Plant Your Own Metaphors—Prompt by Perugia Press

WiFi was spotty in the Ozarks, so here is a short post with a borrowed prompt. I will do a longer post later in the week.

Bonus prompt: write a poem or story with dialogue about values between two trees. For example, what would the sandbox tree (hura crepitans) say about symbolism to an apple tree, or an oak to a willow?

Good luck writing! Have fun!

Muppet Time!—Prompts Inspired by Aruni Wijesinghe

I got to see this poem develop in a workshop and utterly love it. Btw, it is included in Aruni’s book 2 Revere Place, published by Moon Tide Press, https://www.moontidepress.com/books.

For the first prompt, take a muppet or beloved children’s character and write a thoroughly modern, realistic story or poem—perhaps a sonnet, hey!— about that character. Provide clues throughout but leaving the most obvious one for the final stanza or paragraph.

The second prompt is to write a poem or story that starts with a Mad Lib of the line “On Sesame Street, love wears striped sweaters,” but replacing the street and “striped sweaters” with your own. See where it takes you.

The third prompts is write a list poem detailing “small moments of awkward intimacy.”

The next prompt is taken from Emma Bolden, another fabulous poet, in which you write a poem or story based on a famous movie that now has muppets.

Or throw in a muppet anywhere you like:

And the final prompt: pair a human character from a TV show, movie or book with a muppet, or with you as a muppet.

Good luck writing! Have fun!

“Empty Vessel”—Prompts Inspired by Taylor Franson-Thiel

Note that this poem has a content warning for religious violence / trauma.

Here is such a beautiful poem that weaves facts with the religious and the personal that I now have to find more poems by the poet and to read issues of Stone Circle Review, which published the poem. Here is the poem’s link in the journal: https://stonecirclereview.com/hymn-for-a-faith-crisis/

For the first prompt, replicate the poem’s structure by referencing a recent scientific study in the first stanza but with the stanza’s last line introducing the image/concept developed in the second stanza. The second stanza weaves that new concept with imagery of the body and/or religious themes. The third stanza builds upon those themes, making sure that imagery or language from the scientific study is included. The fourth stanza continues the imagery and themes but also includes specific definitions or scripture. End the poem with a couplet.

The second prompt is a writing exercise only as it would be too similar to the original. Use the poem’s structure and wording as is but replacing the poet’s nouns with your own. However, you could see if any of the revised lines call to you and use one of them as the first line to a poem or story. Make sure your poem has a completely different structure—both in stanzas and individuals lines—though.

The third prompt is to use “How as a child you, an empty vessel, were filled” as ghostline, the first line of a poem or story that you complete and then erase. Remember to credit the poet for your inspiration.

Another prompt is to write a poem or story using the following list of words: “clouds,” “staircase,” “arrow,” “nape,” “fingerprints,” “pearls,” “vessel,” “stripped,” “vacant,” “interpret,” “temple” and “breath.”

The last prompt is to use the image “You grow a granite staircase up your spine” as either a ghostline or as the title of your poem, making sure the poet is credited.

And perhaps because of my own upbringing and background, I see an angel in the clouds and also a pissed off Victorian lady. For a bonus prompt, write epistle (a letter in verse) to her.

Bonus bonus prompt: for a play on the word “vessel” write a poem or story about a boat or ship.

Good luck! Have fun!