Poems Submitted for April 29, 2021

Please write a prompt for us! We’ll love your prompt! We’ll do your prompt after we are out of prompts, when our month of poetry together has concluded. Now, do your prompt!

Prompt for April 29
Think of your favorite food. What is the history that went into its creation? Whose spices flavor it? What memories do you have of it across your lifespan? What emotions does it evoke?

Little Tree
By S. Atticus O.

Prompt: There is wisdom in the body. It knows stuff we don't. Sometimes the most valuable thing to do in any moment, especially when the world around feels hard to grasp, hard to face, hard to see, it is best to check in, inside of oneself. In your free-write use words that sound similar (using assonance and consonance) and if you decided to write a poem, make the choice to have the structure be tight or loose based on where the free write took you.

Little Tree

Tight pack of dirt
Stuffed in my sternum
Perhaps water trickle
Might grow geraniums

Little plant needs
Patience water love
Potter at work
Breathes though gloves

Work will we do
Doing nothing at all
But watching go
Fill, flow tall, fall

Name present pain
There seed deep goes
Please leave roots room
Pleads pass you know

It is hard, my boy
How you, I know, feel
Beginning is hardest
It is deeply concealed

Smile. After seeking
It is easier to be
First step is out
Look inside. See.

Choose an episode from history, famous or obscure. Now imagine one person involved in that episode—not the famous figure at the center, but someone on the periphery: a bystander, a drummer boy, the person who cleans up after the horses or drives the ambulance, the spectator struggling to adjust the weight of the child on her hip, a dog sniffing at the wind. Now pick a specific moment from this historic episode. Maybe it’s the split second before the celebrated speech begins, or the long minute after the space ship lands and before the men climb out. Describe this moment from the perspective of that peripheral person (or dog), using as much sensory detail as possible. What do things look and smell like? Is there silence or noise or a mingling of the two? What is the weather like? How does it feel, inside and outside this particular body, to be here?

This is a New Medicine
By Logan Corey

orange and soft-curved, like velvet
upholstery straddling a couch at auction,
gagged in plastic wrapping, its tiny
metal feet choked
in styrofoam, like your tongue
cottoning around the zeppelin-heft
tunneling through a swallow

Prompt for April 29th
by Renée Szostek

Select a character from a book you have read. You are going to have a conversation with and meet this character. You may meet this character in the setting of the book, or in your life now. What would you say to this character? What would you do with this character? Would you have coffee or tea, see a movie, or browse in a bookstore or library together? Write a poem about your encounter with this character.

April 29 Prompt
By Jodi Ann Korte

Recall the last thing that made you angry. Not sort of angry – truly rage angry.
Do not write about what it was that made you mad, but how you felt. Where were you? What did your body feel like? How did it affect your day? If there was a soundtrack for it, what genre would it be? If it was an animal, how would it react? Would it be a simple or complex math problem? How long did it last or does it still remain? If you weren’t you, if you were somebody else viewing your actions/reactions, would the rage be justified or would you have thought it was over reaction?
Jodi Ann Korte

April 29 Prompt
By Claire Steigelman

Take a trip back to your high school days. Or, just look around you if you’re in high school now. What do you wish your school had? How do you wish your curriculum was different, your school’s philosophy? How would you design a new high school that was different? Do you wish it was a bit more like college as far as course selection goes? Would there be majors and minors? Would you like to try out trimesters instead of semesters? When would the first day of school be? When would the last day of school be? Would there be a break directly after each term? How would the building be designed? Would it all be under one roof? Would each department or group of similar departments get their own building? Would your school be a boarding school or a commuter school? Would students and their families get to choose? How does one get into your school? Do they just have to pay? Is it free? Do they have to take an entrance exam? Or, do they have to display their talents a different way? It’s all up to you!