This week’s prompts are inspired by Paul Tran’s “Let me be clear./Inside this story is another story” from their All the Flowers Kneeling, shared by Victoria Chang whose book Barbie Chang is one you should check out.

For the first prompt, write a sonnet about your language choices, or be truly ambitious and write a sonnet crown in a modified terza rima. I found this interview with the poet in Electric Literature fascinating.

For the second prompt, use the line “Inside this story is another story” as a ghostline. For an added constraint, reference another story within the poem. Look into the “box” of the story.

For a third prompt, think what your purpose is and lead the poem up to explaining what that purpose is.

The fourth prompt is another ghostline: take the line “Behind the door is another door” and describe the room within. Or use the line “Behind the door is another door as your title (crediting the poet) and jump into an immediate description.

These prompts of course reflect my own obsession with boxes—the ones others place us in as well as the boxes we trap ourselves and the gaps between the boxes inside boxes.