Poetry Prompts
Mathias Svalina Poetry Prompt
- Go to the dump.
- Sift through the dump & collect all the old computers & floppy discs.
- Search through the old floppy discs & computer drives.
- Collect all the writing from these discs & drives, all the cover letters & queries & todo lists & term papers, all the writing no one thought worthy of saving.
- Assemble the abandoned writings in one file in your computer.
- Return to the dump.
- Throw your computer into the dump.
- Wait until your computer & all its programs are obsolete.
- Go to the dump & retrieve your computer.
- Open the file, as you might pull a dead deer from a still living mother deer.
Poetry Prompt
- Swallow a horse.
- Ride the horse you have swallowed.
- Ride off a cliff, right into the poem.
- Unswallow the horse into the poem.
- Unride off the cliff.
- Unpoem.
- Un.
Poetry Prompt
- Go to the graveyard.
- Let the dead write their poems on your livingness.
- When a cloud of gnats appears, step into the cloud of gnats.
- Let the gnats to get all in your eyes & nose & mouth.
- Let the gnats cover your face completely.
- Peel the poems the dead have written off of your livingness.
- Lay the dead’s poems in the sun to dry.
- Brush the gnats from your face.
- You will have a different face.
- You will have a different angel.
- The hidden trees.
- The death rates.
- The gnats.
- The phosphorescence.
- It’s enough to make you want a good enough trumpet.
- It’s enough to make you want a mask of gnats.
- Good enough to write an epitaph.
- Good enough to soothe the dead.
Poetry Prompt
- Write a poem.
- Chop the poem into pieces with an ax.
- Wait until the ax falls apart into splinters & rot & the axhead rusts to nothing.
- Collect the splinters & rot & rust & poempieces in a steel bucket.
- Fill the bucket to the rim with good, clean water.
- Mix the contents into pulp.
- Make thick paper out of the pulp.
- I didn’t cry at my dad’s funeral.
- There was a tarpit in the church.
- Ancient bones rose to the tarpit's surface & sank back down.
- The tarpit bubbled & bubbled, each bubble a breath.
- Sit beside that tarpit.
- Sit close enough for the bubbles to splash tar on your dark clothes.
- Wipe the tar off with the fresh pieces of axpaper.