In 2002, I was living with  Omoizele Okoawo, and a third...ummm...challenging roommate. Said roommate was also a writer, and in a rut. Omoizele sat him down, in a room where I was already sitting, and explained that his recent writing had been ethereal, and hard to follow. Omoizele suggested that he didn't need to stop his ethereal work, but he needed to ground it with something. Start with something real and necessary, and then build to the more fanciful. 

His suggested starting point was "All I need is a room", which may have been his early hint that the roommate needed to move out.

I don't remember whether or not the roommate used the prompt, but I did, and ended up with one of my favorite poems from that era of my writing.

I structured the poem so that the thesis of each stanza was "what I need" which would branch out to a series of things I wanted.

Life is rarely ideal. 

Imagine your ideal meal right now. Not necessarily something you'd pick as Your Last Meal, but something that would currently bring you joy.

What did you last eat?

​Did it bring you joy? 

You might end up with a utilitatarian dystopia of the body poem, or something fanciful and full of joy. Or both. Try coming at this poem from a few different angles.

From Nicole Homer's Asterisk & Sidebar Prompts:

​Poet Maya Marshall asks in her poem “Strays” “What’s the opposite of lingerie?” The first time I read that line, I put the book down and sat there thinking about the nature of that question. I still am. 


Today, choose one item of clothing from your list and ask yourself what its opposite is. Fo this you have to have a working definition of what the item itself is? For example, what is the opposite of sweat pants? For me, it’d be helpful to know who wears sweatpants? Under what circumstances? For how long are they worn? What feelings are associated with them? What actions? What do they look like? How were they acquired? Only once I having a definition of what they are can I explore their opposite.