More weeks of poor productivity—hence the delay—but let’s have some fun. It is a month of spookiness!

For your first prompt, release some long-held resentment and throw a curse. Name your target and make your curse personal and specific. Be cruel if necessary: “may your chapstick melt in your purse and all toothpaste taste of rotting fish.”

For your next prompt, write a poem as if it were a spell to bring you back from death. What would draw you from eternal peace? What scents and tastes or textures attract you? Or include what you believe represents your sense of self.

Your third prompt is to write from the pissed-off persona of this tree. Or at least that’s what I thought as it seemed to stare back at me. I may have been dehydrated at the time though.

For your fourth prompt, write about one of your fears. It doesn’t have to be a poem, but it does need to be detailed description or event, more than just a few lines. (And more than just “spiders” as I might say.) Then make an erasure from what you’ve written. What do you choose to mark out or erase? What do you make out of a fear that you—on paper at least—have lost or marked off?

And for your final prompt, write a poem using a common horror trope, such as writing from the persona of a slasher film’s final girl. If that shorter list didn’t help you, check out the site for tropes and be sucked in. Muhahahahahahahaha!

Good luck! Have fun!