Think back to an incident where you felt real fear--not anxiety or stress or despair, but fear, that mental, emotional, and physical pit that brings us humans (convinced we are so much more evolved than animals) back to our animal selves. Write a poem that does one of these things: narrates the/an instance (nonfiction, fiction, or a blend) where you felt that fear confronts that fear by addressing it directly starts with a fact about your fear, and then examines that fear fro

Coyote Night Adrian C. Louis A flat tire ten miles east of Pine Ridge just past the Wounded Knee turnoff. I disembark into Siberia looking for Zhivago. A non-stopping semi whines away into a state of exhaustion. This winter night is held in silence as if a giant squid fell upon the land and froze. Scraggly pines try to feel up the miserable moon. Snapping twigs signal sneaking-up coyotes. Here there are no distant garbage trucks, no all-night neon. I click the safety off my .

Love Song: I and Thou by Alan Dugan Nothing is plumb, level, or square: the studs are bowed, the joists are shaky by nature, no piece fits any other piece without a gap or pinch, and bent nails dance all over the surfacing like maggots. By Christ I am no carpenter. I built the roof for myself, the walls for myself, the floors for myself, and got hung up in it myself. I danced with a purple thumb at this house-warming, drunk with my prime whiskey: rage. Oh I spat rage’s nails

Tala (ode to the Girl-Palm) by Majda Gama published in Nimrod, Spring/Summer 2019, Volume 62, Number 2 Voices of the Middle East and North Africa When I ate the fruit of the date palm delivered fresh to me from an oasis in the empty quarter, admired the gilt-twined bag the fruit lay in, & hesitated to disturb this wonder of Arab irrigation, fruit-bat pollination, & desert patience, I knew why fathers send their daughters to the West with kilos of dates: sukkary, khudry, segai

Warning: this prompt has a long-ish introduction. Many years ago, I wrote my first ode. Prior to doing so, I went to Neruda and Keats for some inspiration; I ended up writing an ode using the rhyming end words of a Keats ode. I did it just as a challenge to myself and I had a lot of fun with it. I am currently revising it (again), and the challenge continues: using the same end words while sometimes changing completely the rest of the line. Terrance Hayes invented a new poetr

for Kay Foran published in As If By Magic: Selected Poems (WFUP, 2021) was in 1963 when Miss Shannon rapping the duster on the easel’s peg half obscured by a cloud of chalk said Attend to your books, girls, or mark my words, you’ll end up in the sewing factory. It wasn’t just that some of the girls’ mothers worked in the sewing factory or even that my own aunt did, and many neighbours, but that those words ‘end up’ robbed the labour of its dignity. Not that I knew it then, n

Using Shirley Geok-lin Lim's poem, "Bless this Bagel," as inspiration, write a short poem that is a blessing. A food item is a great thing to use in this poem, as it usually involves other items, as well as a ritual in preparation and/or eating, be it casual, personal, religious, formal, or otherwise. Especially poignant in Lim's poem, and a great goal for you, is how she uses the food as a way to show gratitude for other, larger things, while still remaining with the bagel.

Bless this Bagel by Shirley Geok-lin Lim published in Walking Backwards (West End Press) Bless this bagel this Sunday morning, Stark cold, week-old, toasted crisp. Bless this toaster humming, electricity Zipping from pole to pole, wires that power The flour. Bless the marmalade, Gold with zest and peel, bitter-sweet Like this land of oranges and sweat labor. Bless this thick plain peanut butter I spread, scraping excess, waging The difference between greed and pleasure. Bless

published in Exploded Assembly (Sow's Ear 2019 Chapbook Competition winning chapbook) I don't want to talk about what we have lost, I am not sure there is a difference between prayer and conversation anymore, why anything happens, why thinking is suddenly like this breathless occupied midnight. Out back where the clouds skim the black surface of the pond, it's as if we called them, and now you are saying, Look, the whole flock is here. Snorting, nickering, they drift, white b

Today's poem, "In the ER at 1 AM" by Mary Hanarhan, relates a tragic event in first person. It is a heart-breaking poem, and although we cannot all relate to the circumstances of the tragedy, we can all relate to the deep pain experienced and conveyed by the poem's speaker. This week's prompt asks you to recall a devastating event in your own life. You can, and should, once you begin writing, change whatever details you wish to change; poetry is not nonfiction. Whether or not

In the ER at 1 AM by Mary Hanarhan published in Sugar House Review, Issue 18 You die next to the man holding a dish towel over his bloody eye, and you, my first born, found floating in the toilet. I fish you out with a plastic cuparhan and carry you to the triage desk. Your tiny lima bean body translucent, perfect. The harsh light penetrating paper thin skin veins laced right beneath the surface. Little bud arms and legs tucked in tight. The nurse looks pissed when I as

Hunter's Moon Kelli Russell Agodon published in Waxwing Literary Journal The first person you fall in love with will be a deer. You will want to cradle him, but his instinct is to vanish. Scuttle. Scurry. He may lie down at the end of the forest in the sorrel, but you won’t ever see him even with the binoculars you bring into the wild. Perhaps, he’ll disappear on a trail beside you, and you may be charmed by his departure. He is worried about your heart spear, what you keep h