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!