Laura Walker
“prompt”
Write a poem in which the idea of sunlight through a window is simultaneously a half-glimpsed fox and a bedraggled hymn. Does it sleep when it should be evoking? What is the nature of its neglected tasks, and who must suffer for that neglect? Write its journey of discovery in stages, as in a pilgrimage. Will there be other pilgrims along the way? Will the poem share its damp bread, or instead pretend it has no common language, gibbering at the stiff bandanas and decorated walking sticks? Have your fox/hymn awaken in the pilgrims a strange glowing desire, for what they can never articulate. Have the sun rise and set and rise again, as they make their muddy way among the stones. Have water. Have mercy. Have bread.
This is a previously unreleased poem/prompt by Laura Walker. You can find her six published poetry collections (and more) right here.
Writing prompt: Write a prose poem disguised as a writing prompt. Begin with “Write a poem” and go from there. You can be as a concrete or as abstract as you like. Ask questions, make up rules, go off the rails. Be driven less by logic, less by helpful writing suggestions, and more by rhythm, image, and sound. Do not tell your words where they are going next. Instead, see where your words take you.
If you write something based on this prompt, please share it by commenting directly here or posting on socials and tagging myself (neonpajamas on all platforms). It’s a great day to create something new. Good luck!
While this Substack will always be free, I’d be remiss to not mention my new poetry press. Piżama Press. We launched in 2025 and our two latest releases are out now! Split / Game of Little Deaths by Réka Nyitrai and John’s Table by Lesle Lewis. Both are unique collections of (prose) poems and unlike anything else you’ll read this year. You’d be really helping a small indie press and these wonderful poets by ordering one (or both) of these books, as well as spreading the word (social media, Goodreads, local library, local bookseller). And, if you haven’t done so already, please check out last year’s inaugural release, Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi’s Disintegration Made Plain and Easy, which continues to reach new readers eager to find something strange and surreal, different and original. After all, Piżama’s mantra is “The weirder, the better.” See you next Sunday!
Good poems sound like this: bum bum bum bum bum BUMMAH bum bum BUMMAH bum bum bum bum bum BUMMAH bum bum BUMMAH BUMMAH bum, so write a poem that sounds like that, like an arrhythmic jackrabbit heartbeat, like a tot on a trike toppling down a sand dune, like the sequence of primes, like miscalculated gemmatria, like a crack squad of chariots pulled by three-legged horses, like Jack White’s Jazz Orchestra, like the girl you had a crush on who died of death, like farting into the whirlwind, like dunking on yourself (and then you cry), like brain on fire brain on fire brain on fire that’s good and now relaaaaaaaaaaaax, like holy shit man did you see the revenant?, like “thesaurus” is another word for “treasury,” now take out your decoder ring and follow the steps, once more with feeling, bum bum bum BUMMAH bum bum BUMMAH bum bum yeah, write a poem exactly like that if you like.
Write a poem where the poet forgets. Perhaps it is a peaceful undergoing, like honey pools within the honeycomb; or perhaps the body and the mind are all gone. Write as if every thought has become unaligned with its ghosts. Placed within a human night and within the avenues of this cloister is an orchard of black and fuzzy pears. Let no one walk among the trees. Yet who picks the pear and knows the taste? Let the laughter that rifles into the air become the poem’s refrain. Become unaligned and drunk, like wine and milk. Then forget the fuzzy pears. Forget the honeycombs and the ghosts and other tantrums of wings without a sky.