If you enjoy these prompts, please buy Porsha's latest book, I Shimmer Sometimes, Too from Button Poetry.

Parable. Tell the story of your parents meeting, not as the origin story of you, but as the conclusion to their own stories. Try and use a vocabulary you don't usually employ, be it fairy tale language, a technical support manual, a cheesy romance novel, whatever sparks you to tell a story in an unusual way.

My Mother. Ask someone important to you to tell you a story that  you didn't previously know about them, but that they would feel comfortable with you sharing with others through your writing.  Take their literal story and make it into something akin to a folk tale or a tall tale. Use their story to make them a legend.

I Am Neither The Poem Nor The Words, Nor The Letters, Nor The Images They Elicit. Go back in your own history to a time where you were extremely uncomfortable, not just because of the people around you, but because of the physical place you were in. Give yourself a mantra and running commentary to be calmer. Come out of our memory of the event feeling calmer than you felt coming out of the actual event.

The Electric Slide Is Not A Dance, Man. Take a physical activity, be it a dance move, a pattern for scoring in a sport, a repeated motion you have to make at your job, and dissect it as though it were something else competely. Tell us how a Flea Flicker is like being a wingperson for a socially awkward person, or how directing cars how to park at a concert is like having a political discussion with your family.

Aladdin's Genie Of Emancipation. What if you were a genie, freed by someone who plans on using your wish granting power to hurt others. What wishes do they make? How do you use semantics to give them what they ask for without giving them what they want?

Look At What I've Done! Most of us have killed bugs before. Why? What specific benefit did it afford you? Most ofus have also imagined killing someone before. Maybe not with any specifics. Maybe just wishing a person were dead. How do you reckon these behaviors with your morals?  

Water. Dissect a stereotype people have about something that you represent. Be it your race, your gender, your occupation, the sports team you root for. Go in-depth with why it might be historically accurate, and why it may not. Here is my usual warning: If you're a straight, white dude, instead of dissecting your straightness, your maleness, or your whiteness, maybe dissect a hobby you enjoy, or if you belong to a subculture like nerd, bros, engineers, cosplay enthusiasts, maybe focus on one of those things rather than being straight, or white, or male.

The Muse For This Black Dyke Is A Dead White Man. There is something about all of us that will make another type of person uncomfortable. It'sprobably their own bullshit, and not yours. Still. Rationalize hat makes them uncomfortable in a way that glorifies you, while not necessarily making them any more comfortable.

A Brief Antecdote... There have been a lot of positive cultural changes in the twenty-first century. Yes, there are still plenty of people being fucken awful and fighting changes, but let's leave them behind for this one prompt. Give us a not-widely-known history on why a single positive change has occured. You can start with the oppression of a culture you belong to, if you'd like You shouldn't start with the oppression of someone else's culture. And if you think there hasn't been improvements for your straight, white, maleness, look up the history of unions and how they've improved living conditions, or the history of medicine and how they've allowed for healthier lives.

Un-Named. Tell us the history of one of your name. Be it your first, middle, or last.

Black Spells. Center a poem around a togue twister. Untangle it in a way that people won't expect.

After James Brown. Pick a musician you enjoy. Someone whose catalog you know inside and out. Now, base your poem on their biggest hit. The thing they are most known for. Why is or isn't it a great representation of that artist?

(Again), Retell the story from the "I Am Neither The Poem Nor The Words, Nor The Letters, Nor The Images They Elicit" prompt. This time, imagine you narrowly avoided having to be in that situation at all. How does that change things for you?

I Milly Rock On Any Block. Take the subject from the "The Electric Slide Is Not A Dance, Man" prompt and praise or bury the actual physical activity, mildly hinting at the secondary subject matter that you associated it with.

If you enjoy the prompts presented here, please go buy Danez's book from IndieBound.

1. My President. Whether you're A Social Justice Communist That's Ruining Our Mid-Twentieth Century White Conservative Values That Don't Apply To Us, or A Greedy Nazi Bigot For Christ Whom Jesus Wouldn't Care For, you probably think at least one American President in your lifetime is a garbagey piece of unrecyclable garbage. Nominate a list of people you wish were President of Wherever You Live. They can be politicians, celebrities, your relatives, cartoon characters. This is your list. Forget everybody else's rules. Why do you think they'd be a great President?

2. Homies. Reclaim a word that's meant to hurt you. You. Personlly, you. Don't choose a word that doesn't apply to you and try and make it okay. That's someone else's prompt, probably. I want you to take a specific name that someone called you, personally, and reclaim it as something powerful to you. Sing its praises. Why should we love you because of your relationship to that word?

3. How Many Of Us Have Them. This is a new form prompt. Write a poem that ascends. Opening with a one line stanza, followed by a two line stanza, all the way up to twelve lines in a stanza. Have this poem be a praise poem for friendship that starts with praising the friendship of two people you don't know but grows into a poem about either a specific friendship you have, or else umbrellas one of your general feelings about friendship.

4. Jumped! Whether it's violent or psychological, we've all been a bully to someone at some point. Take us on a journey that starts with you being in the position of power and punishing someone for something you feel was justified. End with a story about when you were the victim, but you can see how the person in power felt justified in punsihing you.

5. Saw A Video Of A Gang Of Bees Swarming A Hornet Who Killed Their Bee-Homie So I Called To Say I Love You. Who  would you commit an act of violence for? Why would you be willing to do it? Examine Your moral code for this until you learn something new about yourself and/or the person you love enough to violently defend.

6. Fall Poem. Leaves and school and new television shows and termination of vacations are the stuff of fall. Change change change change change. I'm actually surprised more people don't get married in fall. Yea, spring is all bloomy flowers and grass splitting the tundra, and all, but that's also babies babies babies and being terrible at things. Fall is all about growth change instead of born change. Take us on a journey of  growth using autumnal imagery.

7. Rose. We've all been the bully at least once. Forget the times you think you were justified. When were you competely in the wrong. Looking back, who should you have apologized to for the way you treated them? Give them your apology and/or your explanation. Own your terribleness. Don't excuse your behavior, apologize for it.

8. I'm Going Back To Minessota Where Sadness Makes Sense. For me, places hold emotional triggers even more than places. Sure, some are nostalgic and positive, but mostly there are places I won't return to unless I have to. The place just feels Wrong. Tell us about a place that holds some sort of emotional power over you. You don't need to try and explain why. Just describe the emotional feel of the place.

9. The Flower Who Bloomed Through The Fence In Grandmother's Yard.  A ghost line is where you start a poem using a line by someone else, and write a whole poem wherever that first line guides you. Then you go back and delete that first line. You can make it an epigraph, if you wish, but it can no longer be the first line of your poem. Your ghost line for this exercise is : grander for his quarantine.

10. In Lieu Of  A Poem, I'd Like To Say. For years, I thought I hated figs. Those cardboard Fig Newtons that parents gave out to my generation clotted my mouth. But it was the cookie I hated, not the fruit. Thirty years of avoiding figs because of crappy cookies. Sing us a song of praise for the fruits you love. Sure, vegetables, candy, bread, soup, juices, you can do that if it suits you better. But do your best to love on some fruit.

11. Dogs! Pretty straight forward, here, a poem that encompasses multiple dogs, real or fictional, and contains many different themes or metaphors. No #notalldogs or #alldogs, stories about dogs that might contradict each other. Dogs you love. Dogs you fear. Dogs that bit you. Dogs who waited for you. Wag our tails.

12. Ode To Gold Teeth. Write a praise poem for something rooted in vanity. The face lift. The spray tan. The expensive shampoo you canm't really afford. Something that has impacted your life (it doesn't have to be something you've done, it can be something someone you love has done, or something one of your coworkers has done; Just someone's act of vanity that you have to deal with on a fairly regularly basis). Praise it.

If you enjoy this suite of prompts, please buy a copy of Nicole Sealey's book.

1. Medical History
Your family's medical history is one way to get a feel for who you are and where you come from. What other list-style poem ideas can you come up with to define your history? A list of your ancestors' and family's jobs? Hobbies? Mapping out where they lived?

2. A Violence
What trait expected of your gender/someone your age/someone from your family/someone with your occupation/someone with your gender attraction do you not only Not Meet but have No Desire to meet? What does it say of you? And others?

2.5 A Violence
Ghost line: "You look just like/ your mother," he says, "who looks just like a fire/ of suspicious origin." A body, I've read, can sustain/ its own sick burning, its own hell, for hours.

3. Candelabra With Heads
Yesterday, I was sent a link to an Icelandic museum's necropants, a pair of pants made from the  skin of a dead relative. The practice is believed to only exist in folklore, and not in real life, and was supposed to bring wealth to the person who wore their ancestor's skin. This gives a new horror to the phrase "Don't judge a person until you've walked a mile in their skin." 
Using a grusome image, tell a story from your family history.

3.5 Candelabra  
Palindrome Poems are poems that are written to a pivotal line, at which point, the poem is then rewritten in reverse order. Create one on the subject of your choice.

4. Hysterical Strength
What supposedly incredible experience do you find an ordinary occurence necessary to get through life?
 
5. Legendary
Center a poem around a color. Use this color repeatedly in images. Deconstruct the color. Reconstruct it. 

6. It's Not Fitness, It's A Lifestyle
The rise of social media has given us a wider understanding of how people use their prejudice against people for no other reason than to make themselves feel powerful by hurting complete strangers rather than listening  to them or having a conversation. What prejudice have you felt or imagined levied against you as you were just going about your life? (If you're a straight white dude, you can write about the prejudice people have against your job, your age group, a specific community you belong to [poets, cosplayers, wrestling fans, etc.], the city you live in, etc. DO NOT write about prejudice people have against you for being a straight, white dude. No matter how much you believe it's true, nobody wants to hear that bullshit.)

7. Happy Birthday To Me
Reflect, specifically, on the most recent year of your life. Without making references to any specific incidents, how did you feel during that year.

8. The First Person To Live To One Hundred And Fifty Years Old Has Already Been Born
If you had the opportunity to be immortal, or, at the very least, several centuries old, what would you do with all that time? Would it be worth it?

9. In Igboland
Ghost Line: I want / to learn how  to make something/ holy, then walk away.

10. Legendary
 I hate to brag, but I'm a one-man parade,/ Jehova in drag, the church in a dress./ Outside these walls I may be irrelevant,/ but here I'm the Old and the New Testament.
You are unlikely to write a more powerful brag than that. But try. Write a stanza or two focused on a talent or body of knowledge you have, then close the poem with an epic brag about it.

11. Heretofore Unuttered
Tell about a time when you were happy to go unnoticed.

11. And
Use asonance, internal rhyme, and alliteration to make a soundscape a listener would be happy to be lost in.

12. Cento For The Night I Said, "I Love You"
Write a cento using at least five sources. Remember to give credit. Credit the original authors. Make sure you've credited your sources. For the love of all that's holy in writing, mention the sources you borrowed from every time you read the poem out loud or write it down. The boundary between cento and plagiarism is HUGE and THICK, and it mainly centers on giving appropriate credit.

13. Virginia Is For Lovers
Tell about a time you massively misunderstood something a friend was trying to subtly tell you. How did you react when you finally figured it out? Was it something you needed to atone for?

14. Clue
Base a poem on a popular board game or video game that you enjoy. Or one you hate. Give time to what most appeals to you.

15. C ue
Take a poem from the previous fourteen prompts and make an erasure of it.

1. Soot
In religious lore and mythological fables, there are often stories of gods coming to Earth in disguise to learn more about humanity. If you were a god, what disguise would you use, and how do you believe this would help you discover more about us oh so interesting creatures? Alternately, if you were Not The Least Bit Interested In Humans, what would you hope to learn during your time on Earth?

2. Wild Pear Tree
It's been January for months in  both directions is an incredible first line for a poem. For me, Augusts are the interminable months of the year. Is there a month for you that seems to go spectacularly bad (or, if you're feeling hopeful, a month that goes splendidly) each year? Tell us why, and how you would either choose to make it stop, or to make it stretch on forever.

2.5. Wild Pear Tree
Akbar also discusses sliding into a bathtub filled with pears as if into a mound of jewels. Center a poem around an unusual physical situation, and try and provide the reader with a thoroughly unexpected tactile comparison that makes more and more sense each time you read it.

3. Do You Speak Persian?
​Is there a language you studied or learned when you were younger that you no longer use on an even semi-regular basis? If so, what words do you remember? What words do you wish you still had easy access to?

4. Yeki Bood Yeki Nabood
every day someone finds what they need/in someone else  Who was not just important to you but necessary to who you were when you were younger. What is your relationship to that person now?

5. Portrait Of The Alcoholic With Home Invader And Housefly
It can be difficult/ telling the size of something/ when it's right above you -- the average/ cumulus cloud weighing as much/ as eighty elephants.  ​ Using very precise images, explain something seemingly or actually intangible you previously misunderstood but now are comfortably knowledgeable about. For example, peoples’ ages, physical distance, the transition from liquid to gas, etc.
 
​6. Recovery
What do you believe should have killed you? Don't tell us how you survived or what you will do now that you've lived through it. Merely describe the situation and sensations before you knew you were going to live through it.

7. Drinkaware Self-Report
Find a very brief  (ten questions or less) quiz designed for self-help or accountability. Rather than answering the questions literally, tell a brief anecdote that you feel answers the question better than a yes, nor or quantifiable answer.

8. Calling A Wolf A Wolf (Inpatient)
envy is the only deadly sin that's no fun for the sinner  Write from the perspective of someone who's envious of something you have achieved. Do not judge them for their envy.

9. Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
What trivial things do you remember that have, in no way, benefitted you? What information that you wish you'd retained, do you think it has replaced?

10. Portrait Of The Alcoholic With Withdrawal
Start a poem with the  following ghost line: everyone wants to know/ what I saw on the long walk/ away from you

11. Some Boys Aren't Born They Bubble
Humans dance uniquely. I mean that other animals seem to mostly dance with purpose. They have a go-to move for mating, or for fighting. There seems to be an infinite amount of ways a human can dance, and it's not always (sometimes, sure, but not often) clear what their motivation is. Tell us the story of a particular dance.

12. Heritage
Penance is both a religious and secular oddity. We punish ourselves or others in a way that usually benefits neither us nor the person being punished. This is a strictly human behavior that defies   logic. When did you punish someone (or something...say if you smacked a computer that wasn't working fast enough, or kicked a chair because you stubbed your toe on it) in a way that, in retrospect, didn't help either of you. When were you punished in that fashion?

13. Milk
Despite the weird resurgence of Flat Earthers, our planet is still round. Yet creatures moving across the ground, through the water, and in the sky, appear to be moving in straight lines. What illusion most   perplexes you, even though you are fully aware that it's an illusion?Portrait Of The

14. Alcoholic With Doubt And Kingfisher
Faith is a story/ about people totally unlike you/ building concrete walls around their beds.  If you are a person whose life is faith based, tell us a story about something you did in defiance of faith. If you are someone who does not tend to make decisions based on faith, tell us about a time when faith played an unlikely role.

15. Desunt Nonnula
What were your favorite words growing up? Even if you didn't know what they meant, what words did you use so frequently, they could have been your catch phrase on a terrible sitcom?

16. Learning To Pray
So much of who we are as children is mirroring adults' behavior. If you can remember such a time, tell us about it. If not, have you ever seen another child mirroring an adult? How did that affect you?

17. Portrait of The Alcoholic Three Weeks Sober
Imagine being the sand forced to watch the silt dance/ in the Nile. Imagine being the oil boiling away an entire person.  Become a specific body of liquid, whether the last drop of gasoline spilling from the pump into the tank of a car, or the remnant of a rainstorm.

18. Supplication With Rabbit Skull And Boquet
Ghost line prompt: I'm growing into my science  

19. Exciting The Canvas
Write a deconstruction of the words light and shadow.

20. A Boy Steps Into The Water
Attraction to something non-traditional always seems dangerous, whether its lust for a person, desire for an item of clothing we can't afford, drive to play a video game that would definitely make us late to work. Focus on something you want but don't need, and, in fact, will never get. Forget why it wouldn't work out, just tell us about the experience of wanting it.

21. Wake Me Up When It's My Birthday
Keep a soul open and it's bound/ to fill up with scum.  If we don't grow as people, we become terrible. There is a reason why calling an adult "infantile" is not a compliment. Why we dislike grown adults who have tantrums. Why we dislike the desire inside us to throw a tantrum when things don't go our way. It's cathartic to wail and rattle our limbs, but it never solves anything, so, whe we adult properly, we use the language and logic we lacked as children. What part of yourself do you fear becoming stagnant? How are you working to change it?

30. Secret Written From Inside a Piranha's Mouth. Have you ever adapted your diet, your music listening prefereces, your wardrobe to fit the preferences of someon you were attracted to? Gross, huh? But most people have done it at some point in their lives. Write a list of things an ex preferred of you and others they dated. Let the list speak for the dynamics of the relationship.

31. The New Crucible.  Choose a play you've enjoyed (or hated, if that's how you roll). Write a poem with at least three distinct sections. The first should focus on the plot, the second section should focus on a particular character, and the third should spotlight a setting where a particular scene (or the entire play) takes place.

32. Dumpster Full Of Dresses.  Give us a tour through a place where something meaningful happened to you. Present it as a Haunted House.

33. The Feast. Several years ago, someone went well out of their way to hurt me, for no reason other than to try and improve their own social capital. While one friend was advising me that the person who hurt me wasn't worth wasting time on, another friend said that the other person wasn't so bad because one time that person had prepared him breakfast. We don't speak very often since then. If you were to prepare a meal to save or ruin  a friendship or a relationship, what would it be? How would you serve it?

34. For The Woman Who Loved The Predator More Than His Prey. Curse someone with a litany of things that sound positive, but when combined will ruin the person you are cursing.

35. Secret Written From Inside a Crocodile's Mouth. How would you construct an emotional suit of armor for yourself?

36. The Believer. Ghost line prompts are where you start a poem with lines from someone else's work, and when you are finished, you erase those lines so that only your own work remains. Begin your poem with the following ghost line: He said tequila, she gave him a grove of lime trees. The sea.

37. The Boy Moving Overseas Asks To Meet For Coffee To Address Our "Miscommunication" About His Ongoing Friendship With A Man Who Raped Me. Recount a difficult conversation with someone you believed was your friend.  Be more thorough and honest (and metaphorical) in your recounting than you were able to in reality.

38. The Unkindness.  Tell us a story about animals helping other animals. Whether you metaphor it to your life is up to you.

39. Alias. Are there any good reasons for a person to change their name? Explain your involvement in a name change, whether its your own or someone you've encountered.

40. Secret Written From Inside A Grizzly's Mouth. Ghost lines: Every few years I start a bonfire,/incinerate a mattress or a man/ or a city, then dust off the rubble/ and rebegin from the nothing/ I uilt with my own hands.

Perpetual Motion. Many writers I know, and several non-writers, often fight their urge for wanderlust. To drive aimlessly, to schedule a poetry tour that they know won't make them money, to follow a band around the nation, to find cheap airfare and fly off to a country in which they don't even know the common language. What inspires your wanderlust? Do you fight it and win? Do you have a good on-the-road story? Does wanderlust not affect you directly, but influences the life of someone you care about? Tell us about it.

2. Poem For Men Only. Masculinity is tough, huh? Between Mens' Rights Activists, and the men who struggle against that stereotype, your average open mic listener has spent entirely too much time listening to men talk about masculinity. So take a break for this prompt. Write about a female or non-binary inventor. If you are female or non-binary, write it however you wish. If you're male identified, then completely remove yourself from the poem. Don't talk about how the female or non-binary inventor inspired you or changed your life or what her love life was like, write a list poem about them, or find an angle that never mentions the inventor's beauty or courage. Tell us about the invention. Try to avoid mentioning men at all.

3. Oh Mercy. Writing on the moon is So 20th Century. If you wanted to use a legendary, non-traditional way to send a message to someone, how would you do it? No, not by using The Internet or television, Mitch. Give us something as big and attractive as the moon.

4. My Country. If you're American, what horrible but very American thing have you done in your life? If you hail from another country, what thing have you done that's considered a negative stereotype of someone from your nation.

5. One Season. What's the worst thing a friend has ever called you? Why did it bother you? Were you able to keep being friends?

6. The Delay. Let this set of lines from the poem serve as your inspiration: "some of us would rather die than change. We love/ what will destroy us/ as a shortcut through this world/ which would bend and break us slowly/ into average flesh and blood./ I close the book and listen to the noises/ of an ordinary night."

7. Sweet Ruin. What's the most destructive thing you've ever done that you're willing to talk about in public? Tell us the story with a particular focus on the images and environment around you, rather than the just the emotions and rationalizations.

8. Proud. Apart from the incident from the last prompt, what's your biggest regret? Does it speak to the sort of person you are? Again, tell the story with a focus on the details of the physical place around you, rather than what was going through your mind or heart.

9. Second Nature. Surely, we've heard people talk about what they were in past lives. And, sure, reincarnation seems just as realistic as either an afterlife or a void of existence. But forget about your reincarnated past. Tell the world about your future lives. What will you do? Will it be reward or penance for the life you're living now?

10. Carnal Knowledge. In his poem, Tony Hoagland talks about being 18 and kissing a girl who'd just had his penis in her mouth, and how that changed his perception of the world. "by now you were beginning to suspect/ that everyone/ lives a secret life of acts/ they never advertised" Did you have a moment like this? What was it? When did it happen to you? Feel free to approach the poem with as much adolescent melodrama as possible.
​
11. The Question. There's a set of lines in this poem "anything can be explained./ The shape of apples, for example,/ by their love of travel." Tell us about a property of an inanimate object that we've likely never considered. How did it get that way? Is there a purpose to it? Be as surreal or ridiculous as the subject asks of you.

12. A Dowry. Naming things is such a powerful aphrodisiac or weapon. Spend some time renaming things that surround you as you write. It's like that old meme where they call raccoons "trash pandas" or snakes "nope ropes". Or it's like that time your friend had a nervous breakdown and started naming walnuts after all of his exes before he smashed them with a hammer.

13. You're The Top. Do you have a favorite song lyric that sort-of but not-quite rhymes (mine is The Dresden Dolls "I didn't think so" and "I'm still convincable" from Coin-Operated Boy)? Why does it work for you? Find something non-traditional in a poem or song that you enjoy. Be it a weird rhyme scheme, an image that makes no sense, or a bizarre form. Tell us why you love it.

14. Two Shades Of Orange. Describe your higher power as a city or village or island or neighbrohood that you love.

15. Doing This. When have you crossed the line with someone you care about? It can be something as small as passive-aggressive silence or as large as you're comfortable presenting to an audience. Don't excuse yourself for it. Hold your past self-accountable, and try and convince said past self to do something, anything other than the terrible thing you've done.

16. The Word. Y'all this prompt isn't about the poem. In my purchased-used copy this book by Tony Hoagland, after the poem by Tony Hoagland, someone has written Tony Hoagland's name. Lest some errant reader of this book be confused, almost halfway through the collection, as to who wrote it. Where do you fall on the overexplainer / over-explained-to spectrum? How does this affect your life?

17. Volunteer. Create a statement about your relationship to your country, as seen through the lense of your favorite music.

18. In The Land Of Lotus Eaters. How  does a specific classic fable or mythological story relate to your oh so modern life?

19. The Collaboration. Find a friend who has read a book that was important to you. Together, write about whether or not the book is important to the world at large. (If said friend isn't a writer, just have a conversation, and use their words, with attribution, of course, in your poem/story.)

20. History Of Desire. Tell the world what you thought "the world" was like when you were seventeen. Don't correct that view or apologize for it.

21. Properly.  I frequently have to stop myself from just suggesting "write a love poem where you donm't objectify the person/thing you love" over and over again. So this time, I'll say, write a love poem to a person or tangible thing. Use only scientfic language. Instead of objectifying it/them, classify it/them. Their beauty is irrelevant. Their mechanics is what we're interested in hearing about.

22. Men And Women. Who has been wrong to be in love with you? Why? How? Don't try and change that person's mind, just explain their incorrectness to a third party. (Us.)

23. Travellers. Ok, fine. Love love love. Love love love. Tell us about the word love. Tell us about the feeling of love. Tell us about the allure of love. Use lovey language to love the love out of love. But don't attach it to an object. Forget who or what you love, just talk about how great love is. Ok?

24. Geography. Describe the moments just before you sleep or just after you wake.

25. A Love Of Learning. "Affection by association". You start to love a thing because someone you love or admire loves that thing. Maybe it's a band, a sport, a writer, a color, the temperature. Write about a time you discovered your love of a thing was steeped in someone else's enjoyment of said thing.

26. Paradise. ​Start a poem with an unusual item of clothing. See where it takes you.

27. Ducks. The next time youre in a waiting room (hospital, dentist, podiatrist, massage therapist, reiki practicioner, job interviewer, etc.), check out the art. Ust it as inspiration for an ekphrasis. If you're perfectly healthy, and don't want to hang out in a waiting room, there are airports and fast food restaurants you can go in and enjoy inoffensive art for free.

28. All Along The Watchtower. Watch a recording of your favorite video or concert. Strip the music and lyrics away. Tell us everything else about the performance. The physicality of the performers. The stage dressing. The lighting. The audience.

29. Emigration. Very few people enjoy getting old or getting sick. Without mentioning the physical effects, what is that experience like for you?

30. Threshold. Every poet talks about bodies as landscapes. Find another way to describe your own or another person's bodies. Preferably, not someone you're currently in love with.

31. Safeway. Let's go back to age seventeen again. Or some age that is important to you. Find a single moment that sticks in your mind about being that age. Document that moment as though nothing is wrong, then give us a classic swerve in the last stanza, letting us know what was really happening, that you weren't aware of at the time.

32. Smoke. Address one of your faults like the old friend that it is, and strike up as a casual conversation.

33. Astrology. Alright, look. Everyone's going to write a poem that involves the stars at some point. Invent some constellations. NOT OF YOUR LOVER'S FRECKLES. Tell another person in your poem what thost constellations mean.

34. In Gratitude For Talk. Find a line in a poem that you wish you could talk to the author about. Imagine how that conversation would go.

35. A Change In Plans. Give an alternate theory of how a non-human animal evolved. Never mention humans. Make it obviously about humans.

​20. If We Were Meat. Humans aren't often on the menu for other animals, apart from the occasional person antagonizing predator into being eaten, or hungry carnivore happens upon human in distress. Many science fiction books, shows, and movies have imagined scenarios in which humans became the favored meat of a deadlier predator. Now it's your turn. What life form would eat us, and how? You can be as literal or metaphorical about this prompt as makes you comfortable.

21. Menace. In horror movies, victims of the predator often get a goading one-liner in before they either escape or are killed. Fortunately, life is rarely like a horror movie (though more and more like a horror show by the year). Imagine a non-imminent-death scenario where you had the opportunity for an epic one-liner but you didn't think of it in time. Instead of giving us the lead up to the line, what do you imagine would have happened differently in your life After you gave the ultimate insult.

22. The Most Dangerous Game. Tell the readers about a time you were brazen, and it ended up working out for you.

23. Reprisal. Give us a complete story in a single tercet.

24. Secret Written From Inside A Lion's Mouth. Ghost line prompts are where you start a poem with lines from someone else's work, and when you are finished, you erase those lines so that only your own work remains. Begin your poem with the following ghost lines: I worried most that the worry would be what finally/did us in.

25. The Sociopath's Wife Knows Endurance. I've read many poems from the voice of the magician's assistant. What other job descriptions lend themselves to the metaphor of being victim? Tell us a story from the perspective of someone in that career.

26. Secret Written From Inside A Vulture's Mouth.  Animal facts often make intriguing entry points for poems. Use an animal fact as the basis for a metaphor in a poem or story. Apart from mentioning the animal in the title of the poem, make no reference to it in the text.

27. How Women Begot The Bible. Persona pieces were a common fixture of performance poetry in the early 2000s. People would choose an interesting character from history and tell a story from their perspective. Instead of going precisely that route, write a poem or story from the perspective of an interesting character from history's therapist, or the best friend they told secrets to.

28. Velocity. What is your childhood bully up to now? How about a close friend that you grew distant from as you got older? Don't google them or Facebook stalk them, just imagine who they grow into. Write that version. Then, if it satiates you, you can look up what they're really like, and write a companion piece.

29. Secret Written From Inside A Shark's Mouth. Another animal fact poem. This time find three or four fascinating facts about the same animal. Alternate stanzas between telling us a story and telling us the trivia that inspired you to think of the story.

Jeanann Verlee's  Prey presents a series of poems about predators and their prey. It's a an exquisitely articulated chronicle of trauma. It's a fantastic book, but it was difficult to come up with a suite of prompts to represent the poems without the fear of inducing trauma on anyone following the prompts, or ignoring the necessity of the subject matter of these poems.

I've tried to be as true to these poems as possible without making this too emotionally difficult for people following the prompts.

1. The Curse. Imagine a curse that would substantially alter your life in a negative way.  How would you navigate yourself in a world where that curse was happening to you?

2. He Wants To Know Why Sometimes In The Face Of Conflict... What do you do when you're faced with an uncomfortable moral conversation or situation? Do you ever sit back and evaluate why you have that response? Is there a historical logical reason? Do you wish your instinctive responses were different?

3. Ode To My Mother's Backhand. It's easy to write praise poems about the people we love, and poetically burn down the houses of those who hurt us. Unless you've been invited to a roast, I don't recommend writing a take down of someone you love. Instead, try and write something positive about something who hurt you. Feel free to stay away from major trauma, and maybe focus on someone who just slightly annoys you or who has caused inadvertant chaos in your life. Maybe someone who cut you off in traffic, or the acquaintance who unknowingly said something terrible about a person you care about. 

4. Secret Written From Inside A Snake's Mouth. What is something you swallowed that you need to get out of you. Again, you can choose to go the traumatic route, but it can also be a guilty pleasure, or a secret that you've been holding on to for years for no discernable reason.

5. The Happy House. If the childhood home you lived in has been sold in the last twenty years, odds are good the real estate agent has put pictures of it online. Google Maps can show you what the outside and the yard look like now. Compare what you remember your house being like (feel free to use photos if you have them) with the way your house looks now. Don't involve people in the poem in any way, just use the physical changes in the house to tell the story.

6. A Good Life. Choose a villain. It can be a villain in your life, a famous villain of history, or a fictional character. Stripping away all judgement, present us with the basic story of their life. Don't remove any of the horrific acts they've committed, just don't use adjectives or metaphor to influence how the audience feels about them. Let the barest bones of their story give the audience everything they need to hate or fear this person of their own volition.

7. The Hunter, His Weapons. Is there a type of weapon you are an expert in? Or, at least, have some experience with? A gun, a knife, a bow and arrow, your mouth, a hammer. Without using an act of violence, tell us about this weapon. Is there anything positive you can do with it? Why are you so familiar with it?

8. Unkind Years. Ask a simple question. Between the subject and the direct object, present a series of scenarios or alternate questions that render the question irrelevant.

9. The Sociopath's Wife Meets The Wheel Of Death. Using a magician's tool as a metaphor, tell a story without a magician.

10. Secret Written From Inside A Coyote's Mouth. Waiting can be excruciating. What is the thing you felt you waited the longest for. Without ever telling your reader if the wait was worth it, describe how you waited.

11. One Winter While Unemployed. Definitively turn down a job offer.

12. Rearrangement Poem For The Mansplainer. Find a speech or internet comment or article that falls somewhere in the spectrum of making you uneasy to being filled with rage. Rearrange the words to completely alter the meaning. Don't change the tenses or leave out words. Let it be jagged. As long as it presents a new message. Either a complete change in the narrative, or a condemnation of the original meaning.

13. Frat Boy. Tell us a story about a time where you restrained yourself from committing violence or showing anger. Tell it from the perspective of the person whose actions you had to restrain yourself from responding to.

14. Casanova Comes To Dinner. When you write a poem, if you're lucky, you reach a point where you create a devestating line, which becomes your favorite part of the piece. Or, maybe you get an amazing line in your head, and that's where your poem comes from. For this experiment, freewrite something poetic, but feel free to give it more of a short story or essay feel than a poem. Make it at least a couple of pages long. The longer, the better. Now chop away every line that doesn't devestate you. It's ok if it feels choppy. Don't bridge the lines in any way. Just be left with your favorite parts of the poem.

15. The Summer Of Supplemental Income. A person walks into the room. You, initially find the person attractive. But the closer you look, the more frightening the person appears. Take us with you on this journey of observation.

16. Commodity. Write a pantoum about how things have changed as you've aged.

17. Question For The Boys Who Watched From The Window. Write out a dramatic scene on any subject. Include as much sensory memory as possible: sights, sounds, very specific images. Also use a variety of similes and metaphors to describe the events. When you feel satisfied with the story, go back and remove all the subject sentences, all of the "likes" and/or "as"es that you used for similes. Edit out everything that isn't an image or sensation.

18. Pack Hunt. There was a slam season a few years ago where everyone who ended up making the team representing our venue had, at one point, presented a poem in which a dog died. Injured or dead pet stories are always devestating. So, tell us a story about a pet in which it was never in any peril. And, please, let the animal be alive at the end.

19. Scene Written From Inside A Falcon's Mouth. ​Tell the reader about a time where you acted uncharacteristically. Look deeper into the situation, and see if you can discover that, maybe, at the core of the story, your uncharacteristic act is absolutely an essential part of your character.

After reading through the first half of Solmaz Sharif's collection, Look, I've written out some prompts inspired by her poems. Like most of the prompts I provided, they desired outcome isn't intended to be that you have a bunch of poems similar to Sharif's. I usually glom on to a line or a concept that the author plays with. Or I might just be inspired to write a prompt based on the title that, in no way, reflects what the author wrote on the subject.

I hope you find these helpful. Feel free to Tweet links to any poems you make from these prompts to CantabPrompts.

1. Look. Due to the instant access to current events that social media provides, more current existers are exposed to information about their country than ever before, which creates a much more decisive nation, no matter which nation that is. What is The Absolute Most you would endure from your country before you denounced it.

2. Battlefield Illumination. Using just one image, contained in one sentence, tell a complete story.

3. Lay. Tell us about an uncomfortable position you were in. Physically uncomfortable, not morally ambiguous.

4. Contaminated Remains. Create a detailed warning sign that you wish existed. It can be for something serious such as Rules For Interacting With Alligators In the Wild or something less literal like Guidelines For Interacting With My Overly Fragile Male Ego.

5. Safe House. Pick a dictionary page full of interesting words. Begin each line or stanza with a word from that page. Go in alphabetical order.

6. Deception Story. The doctor tells us the needle is not going to hurt. The bus driver tells you their bus is full but the next one is right behind theirs. The check is in the mail. There are lots of little lies people tell to make both you and themselves feel better. When was the last person someone told you a small deception that you immediately recognized as horseshit? Would you rather have had them tell you the truth? When was the last time you told one of these little rot lies? Do you think the other person believed you? Whom do these small deceptions serve?

7. Special Events For Homeland Security. Advertise or describe a party for a group of people based on a profession or hobby that you would absolutely Never Go To.

8. Dear Intelligence Journal. Write a letter to a piece of entertainment or literature that has, on some level, failed you. Tell it how it could have done better by you.

9. Free Mail. How has a group you belong to been misrepresented by society? This can be your gender, your race, your favorite fandom, your occupation, people with similar physicality, your ability, etc. Don't take the easy way out with this. Get really specific.

10. Force Visibility. Is there a word whose meaning you once knew that you, however briefly, couldn't remember. Does that speak at all to you? The person who used it? The situation in which the word was used?

11. Break Up. Write two poems on a similar subject. Create a their poem by allowing the two poems to converse with one another. Maybe alternate stanzas from each. Find some way to merge them into a poem with two distinct voices.

12. Ground Visibility. Create a poem out of a series of disjointed images. Don't bridge them with narrative exposition. Allow the images to tell the story on their own.

13. Desired Appreciation. We all have misconceptions about how being a certain age will change our relationship to the world. What did you think would change after your most recent Significant Birthday. Did it? Will this keep you from putting expectations on your next Significant Birthday?

14. Inspiration Point, Berkley. Maybe you know a painter named Barack Obama or a computer analyst named Stormy Daniels. Tell us about a person who has a famous name but isn't the famous person associated with the name.

15. Defenders/Immediate Family. Tell us about an unglamorous job you performed. Something that needed to be done but would be consider either/both gross or emotionally taxing.

16. Stateless Person. Tell us about a person mostly ignored by history. Perhaps the spouse or child of someone famous. Maybe an inventor of something vital to our society. Educate us. But, you know, poetically.

17. Family Of Scatterable Mines. Make a list of five unrelated possible destinations you might fly or long-distance-drive to: tropical vacation, wedding, funeral, family reunion, moving, etc. For each destination, detail what you would pack (feel free to be surreal or metaphysical). Each trip should have its own stanza, but don't let us know what your destination is, or the reason for your trip, let us guess based on what you've packed.

18. Master Film. Life is complicated and overwhelming almost all the time, right? Was it like this for our grandparents? Our ancestors several generations back? Imagine one of your ancestors between jobs or relationships. What was that like for them?

19. Expellee. Do you remember a time when you were sick as a very young child? Did you know what was going on around you or did it seem alien?

20. Mess Hall. Late twentieth century movies about childhood and coming of age would have you believe that every time kids shared a dining hall, a food fight erupted. I must have gone to the wrong schools. Do you have any memories involving dining halls or being in a restaurant with a large group of friends/acquaintances/coworkers?

21. Theater. When were you the most frightened you've ever been? You don't need to explain why, just focus on the details of the when.

22. Soldier, Home Early, Surprises His Wife At A Chick-Fil-A. What was the most inappropriate surprise you've ever received that didn't involve trauma? Mild embarrassment is okay, but the focus of this should be something that was more irritating or amusing than emotionally damaging.

23. Vulnerability Status. What's the most ridiculous facial expression/pose you've ever been in? Were you aware that it was unusual at the time, or was it pointed out to you? What events preceded it? Was the facial expression/pose ever repeated? Have you ever seen anyone else make something similar?

24. Reaching Guantanamo. Write a series of five letters to the same person. It should be a very personal series of letters. Once you are finished writing them, go back and white out/erase/somehow obscure the personal information that you wouldn't want to share with the world at large, or remove information you think the government would classify before sending the letters.

While switching out bookcases  this week, I found a pile of books that I had been missing since  February. Many were books that I have already done interactions for, but one was Roll Deep by Major Jackson. As I think I'm ready to start reading poetry again, after a several month long hiatus, I decided to read this, simply as it was on the top of the pile.

I'll probably do a few different types of interactions with it in the next few days, but I figured I'd start by making a series of prompts that each poem inspired.

1. Reverse Voyage. Tell a story about the place where you live that mainly focuses on the architecture and geography. Not just rolling hills, cracked pavement, the ocean. Tell us about the stores that have disappeared, the ugly yellow fence that is older than you are, the faded yellow lines in the middle of your street. What does the physical landscape tell you about what it's like to live there right now?

2. Greece. Give us the opposite of homesickness. Show your reader a place that is important to you by intertwining at least one piece of historical importance  of the area, one specific memory involving you and another person (if there was one) while you were there, and a sprinkling of that time's meteorology (was it raining? were there birds? could you smell trees or the local capitalism?).

3. ​Spain. Layers of morning pastries flaked gingerly/then fell, soft as vowels, on a china plate. Get your simile on and describe a conversation using food imagery. It can be a disccussion that changed your life, or it can be about how bored you were on a first date. Make us hungry with the wish that we'd been there, or let us journey into the meal with you to escape the conversation.

4. Brazil. How we move in our day to day lives is our own form of dance and martial art. Tell us about a particular motion you do (if you can't think of one, ask someone who would notice this sort of thing about you to help you out) and how it signifies your relationship to your everyday life.

5. Kenya. Write a security briefing about part of your day. Identify the threats around you, and how you intend to avoid them, imagine which information you contain is most likely to be targeted for espionage, and point out any suspicious behavior you encounter.

6. Italy. If someone were dreaming of you, what would they be dreaming about? 

7. On Disappearing. If you were to suddenly disappear from the place where you lived, how do you think people would speculate your absence? Would the place be significantly different without you?  Would anyone figure out where you'd gone?

8. Mighty Pawns. Tell us about someone you know who is an expert at something not enough people value. Maybe they can solve a Rubik's Cube in under a minute. Maybe they make the best mashed potatoes ever eaten. Tell us about them, why their skill is so impressive to you, and why they would still be impressive even if they lacked that skill.

9. Dreams Of Permancence. Walk around your building or neighborhood until you discover something you haven't noticed before. Tell us about it in vivid detail.

10. Stand Your Ground. I'm not usually a fan of poems that address the nation  or city or neighborhood we are from. Too often, they get so large of scope that they feel generic and trite. But you're a good writer. You can handle it. Address a poem to a place that is important to you. Tell it some things you appreciate, and some things it needs to repair. Bonus points if you can make it a Golden Shovel.

11. Thinking Of Our Shame At The Gas Pump. What would you like your last words to be? What do you think that says about your humanity?

12. OK Cupid. Get yourself blissfully lost in a simile/list poem. Make a statement about how one thing is like another thing and keep chaining similes until you feel like you're finished. Then continue for five or six more similes.

13. Calypso's Magical Garden. If you don't own your dreams, who does? What are they doing with them?

14. Aubade. What things do you wish you could be doing rather than trying, and failing, to sleep?

15. Special Needs. In the mornings, I rub my hands together/back and forth summoning the angels/away from the orthodoxy of façades. Damn. Tell us about a morning ritual you have, what it means to you, and what happens if you are unable to complete it.

16. Inscription. Imagine the object of you affection is a place, a ritual, a type of clothing, a meal, a time of day. Describe them only in metaphor. Don't tell us how you feel about them. Let the images do your emotional storytelling for you.

17. Night Steps. If you've never spent some time staring out a window at night, then maybe poetry isn't for you. What have you seen or not seen when zoning out, your eyes pointed at the outside world.

18. Cries & Whispers. Over the course of a day, write down three things that you're fairly sure you'd forget if you didn't write them down. Let that list sit somewhere for a week. Now come back and tell us whether or not those three things were important, and why.

19. On Cocoa Beach. Revisit your relationship to a place you hate or fear. Is the emotion you've tied to that place rational? Do you think you could overcome it? Why should you bother trying to overcome it when there other, less draining, places to go?

20. Ode To Mount Philo. How you travel through a place shows us a lot about your relationship to a place. If you take a subway through the city, you're going to have a different experience than walking, riding a bicycle, or driving a car. Take us on a small journey through a place that's important to you, using two different modes of transport.

21. Enchanters Of Addison County. Show us a place that's important to you as it travels through seasons. Even if you live somewhere equatorial, there is a difference between the winter and the summer. Physically, what changes about the important place? Are there different people there for different seasons? Does the way you feel about the place change as well?

22. Self-Portrait As The Allegory Of Poetry. What's in your trash can right now? Why?

23. Pathetic Fallacy. Ask a series of spiritual questions of yourself. Don't answer them.

24. Fundamentals. Write a three stanza poem where the first stanza is focused on something aural, the second stanza deals with how something is named, and the third stanza incorporates camera angles and perspective.

25. Canon Of Proportions. Tell us about a famous person born before the 20th century, and how they would interact with a piece of modern technology. For example, Jackson mentions that Thomas Jefferson was never a frequent flier. Tell us about Napoleon's arguments over fraudulent credit card charges, what games Mahatma Gandhi plays on his cell phone.

26. Energy Loves Here. Find an album or playlist that's important to you, and freewrite to it, occasionally making reference to images or lyrics that appear in the music.

27. Why I Write Poety. Let's assume you've already written a poem about why you write poety. Write a poem about what's keeping you from writing poetry more often.