We’re already a week into National Poetry Month and so far I’ve been able to finish poems before midnight. This time, I decided not to post poems to the blog so that each poem has a chance of being published in the future. Instead, I will recap each week with the first few lines of my PAD Challenge poems using the prompts from Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetic Asides column on Writer’s Digest.

Day 1 (Prompt: Beginning/Ending)

Let’s begin at the end,
when you’ve already claimed me,
when I’ve given you the orchid
of my trust

Day 2 (Prompt: Voyage)

What do I take on this journey
that doesn’t bring back the past?
I want to travel light but even my lungs
feel burdened by air moving through

Day 3 (Prompt: Message)

We were a hit at the disco party
in that brown-orange-tan-rose
patchwork jumpsuit hip-bumping
down the Soul Train line

Day 4 (Prompt: Since <blank>)

Tonight you are dim light
peeking through a dark veil
of clouds, blurred and diffused,
as mysterious as Churchill’s Russia.

Day 5 (Prompt: Discovery)

We didn’t discover fire;
we made it
with our hands,
rubbing sticks.

Day 6 (Prompt: Night)

Most nights, the window’s reflection
is the only other black face I get to see