Super simple instructions for your prompt this week! Choose a holiday or a season. Write about that time period with a focus on the color/s you associate with it. Make sure children appear, even briefly, in your piece (as Sandburg does in today's blog poem). Have fun! Happy Halloween!

Theme in Yellow by Carl Sandburg I spot the hills With yellow balls in autumn. I light the prairie cornfields Orange and tawny gold clusters And I am called pumpkins. On the last of October When dusk is fallen Children join hands And circle round me Singing ghost songs And love to the harvest moon; I am a jack-o'-lantern With terrible teeth And the children know I am fooling.

The Survivor by Primo Levi Once more he sees his companions' faces Livid in the first faint light, Gray with cement dust, Nebulous in the mist, Tinged with death in their uneasy sleep. At night, under the heavy burden Of their dreams, their jaws move, Chewing a non-existant turnip. “Stand back, leave me alone, submerged people, Go away. I haven't dispossessed anyone, Haven't usurped anyone's bread. No one died in my place. No one. Go back into your mist. It's not

You need to do two things before you start this prompt: 1. Read today's blog poem, "What Haunts Us" by Annie Phan 2. Listen to a song with a ghost in it. Suggested: "Weighty Ghost" by Wintersleep, "Ghost" by Ella Henderson, "The Ghost in You" by The Psychedelic Furs, "Ghost Train" by Summer Camp, "Ghost Lights" by Woodkid, "Ghost Towns" by Radical Face, "Ghost Dancing" by Simple Minds, "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker, Jr., "Cry Like a Ghost" by Passion Pit, or "Ghost Riders in t

What Haunts Us by Annie Phan published in Rust & Moth, Autumn 2020 In the villages of my grandmother, they warn you of the child who beckons you to follow them deep into the forest, offers a heavy loaf of bread. You will choke on the stone in your throat and die hungry like the little child. In my hometown, they warn you of the woman in white who wails for her children along the arroyos, the ones she drowned by her own hand. La Llorona will pull at you to follow her. Maybe th

Plums by Gillian Clarke When their time comes they fall without wind, without rain. They seep through the trees’ muslin in a slow fermentation. Daily the low sun warms them in a late love that is sweeter than summer. In bed at night we hear heartbeat of fruitfall. The secretive slugs crawl home to the burst honeys, are found in the morning mouth on mouth, inseparable. We spread patchwork counterpanes for a clean catch. Baskets fill, never before such harvest, such a hunters’

To the Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. The gun will wait. The lake will wait. The tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait will wait: will wait a week: will wait through April. You do not have to die this certain day. Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. I assure you death will wait. Death has a lot of time. Death can attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet

This week's writing prompt takes its own inspiration from Gwendolyn Brooks and her poem (also posted on this blog today), "To the Young Who Want to Die." First, choose a group that your poem will address. It can be anything from the termites in our lake cabin to motorcyclists without helmets, the nurses caring for my neighbor to the Terra Cotta Soldiers, the maple trees in the arboretum to the 2nd graders at my daughter's birthday party. Brooks chose a very specific group, an

About Almonds and Ambergris by Lorna Goodison Atlanta Review, Spring/Summer 2019 issue There is a perfume rising off the sea today. A scent of almond top notes and base notes of ambergris. I think about ambergris, a griege ball of scent starter coiled in the stomach of sperm whales or rolling free, a pomander perfuming the waters of oceans. Did Jonah know that he was valuable as ambergris sought after and needed to touch pulse points? I meditate upon these matters this day as

Think of, or--better yet--get ahold of something very soft. It could be a blanket, moss, your own hair, a feather, a cashmere scarf, shaving cream, flower petals, cotton balls, taffy, you pet's fur, an eraser, a marshmallow, a ball of yarn, a mushroom, a silk blouse, fuzzy slippers, a stuffed animal, whipped cream, etc. Feel this thing, or think of it intensely. Write your answers to the following questions. Don't worry yet about form, line breaks, diction, etc.--just write.

Residual Memory of Mercy by Nicole Rollender published in typishly Everything is the hopesprung phantom of something else. I married that man, the next morning for a moment not knowing why I was tucked in his bed. He collects spoons’ shiny reserve, clay pots of lush succulents, handmade soaps smelling of spiced apples & wet horsehair. He moves through me as through a quiet house. As if he has thought what he will do when I die. He says I’m dark fruit. A wind moving outside my

Rural Gothic by Despy Boutris published in Zócalo Public Square, April 16, 2021 Loneliness thick as the fields of wheat. Wheat I walk through daily, scent of heat and silt. It shimmers in the breeze, the sun unfurling over the hills. I stand at the edge, cupping my mouth around someone’s name. A cloud of gnats makes chaos of the August air. We need a word for this: feeling far from home when you’re right there. And what is to miss but a catch in the throat, the scent

For this week's prompt, I'd like you to write a negative poem. I am not talking about the speaker's attitude, necessarily: the tone, subject, and theme of your poem does not have to be negative. This exercise is more concerned with diction. Below are some ideas for how to approach this prompt. You can: stress what not to do, who not to speak with, where not to go, etc. write a poem in which the speaker gives advice in the negative. start with a negative first line and stay ne

On the Turning of the Year by Karen An-Hwei Lee published in Spoon River Poetry Review, Issue 43.2, Winter 2018 To witness five seventeen-year cicada cycles in a lifetime—To hear an entomologist refer to cycles as blooms— To say a metallic clicking noise repels the crows in our apple orchard—To say cicada blooms explain the crashing bird populations— To list reasons why I wish to murmur injunctions of praise in the ellipses of fireflies—To wonder if a funicular monikered ange