As some have noticed, I have a thing about birds—a lot of my poems feature birds, especially crows and ravens, and murder—so of course I fell in love with this poem by Kelli Russell Agodon whose poetry has always resonated with me. Click here to listen to read it (I will try to provide more audio links).

For the first prompt, take the first line “The night sounds like murder” but change the last word to a holiday or other celebration. Or if you wish, go through the poem line by line and “mirror the language”—try to use antonyms for the nouns and verbs (“night” to day,” “murder” to “birth,” “hardware to software,” “breakdown” to “make up” and so on. I got this exercise idea from Brendan Constantine. Make sure to give credit to the poet.

For a second prompt, use the following words from the poem: “sounds,” “change,” “days,” “breaks,” “guard,” “hold,” “across,” “bright,” “lighting,” “flock,”

For a third prompt, use “and some days it breaks itself into two” as a ghostline. Don’t forget to erase the line and credit the poet.

Good luck!