Write a catalog or list poem that meditates on a color and an emotion experienced throughout the day—blue and joy, yellow and grief, red and satisfaction, pink and flirtatiousness—without using the name of the color or emotion in the body of the poem.

Alternatively: disobey the prompt, and name the color and emotion. But maybe try it first without naming. And read Mary Ruefle’s poem “YELLOW SADNESS” below.

YELLOW SADNESS by Mary Ruefle

Yellow sadness is the surprise sadness. It is the sadness of naps 
and eggs, swan’s down, sachet powder and moist towelettes. It 
is the citrus of sadness, and all things round and whole and dying 
like the sun possess this sadness, which is the sadness of the 
first place; it is the sadness of explosion and expansion, a blast 
furnace in Duluth that rises over the night skyline to fall 
reflected in the waters of Lake Superior, it is a superior joy and 
a superior sadness, that of revolving doors and turnstiles, it is 
the confusing sadness of the never-ending and the evanescent, 
it is the sadness of the jester in every pack of cards, the sadness 
of a poet pointing to a flower and saying what is that when what 
that is is a violet; yellow sadness is the ceiling fresco painted 
by Andrea Mantegna in the Castello di San Giorgio in Mantova, 
Italy, in the fifteenth century, wherein we look up to see we are 
being looked down upon, looked down upon in laughter and 
mirth, it is the sadness of that.

from My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016)

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Han VanderHart is a queer writer living in Durham, NC and the editor of Moist Poetry Journal. They are the author of Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025), winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, the chapbook Hawk & Moon (Bottlecap Press, 2025), and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021), and have poetry and essays published in Poetry Daily, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and co-edits River River Books.

Collapsing the Phenomenal: An Incredibly Rad and Deceptively Simple Prompt for Poets 

1.     Go outside. 

a.     If you’re unable to go outside, find the nearest window. 

b.     If there is no window, conjure a window in your mind. 

2.     From your place outside, or at your literal or conjured window, observe the following:

a.     sights

b.     sounds

c.     smells

d.     taste

e.     touch

3.     Comingle these sensory impressions with the other thoughts and feelings that you’re experiencing, such that the flash of a cardinal’s wing becomes fused with the thing your beloved said yesterday, or the sound of branches in the wind sits next to your worry about what life holds for you next week. The goal here is juxtaposition, and, via juxtaposition, the unexpected, the unified field, time travel. 

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E. G. Cunningham was born in South Carolina and grew upin Italy and Florida. She is the author of the full-length poetry collections Field Notes (River River Books, 2025), Ex Domestica (C&R Press, 2017), and two chapbooks, Apologetics (FLP, 2017) and Oranges for Venus (Tilted House, 2024). Her work has appeared in The Abandoned Playground, Colorado Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Nation, Poetry London, The Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, Southern Humanities Review, ZYZZYVA, and other publications. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Georgia. Read more about her writing and music at egcunningham.com.

Ask Green Anything  

I’m currently working on a manuscript where I interview different parts of my body and let them speak. This got me thinking that more of our world deserves to be heard on its own terms. Since the green is greening hard in my part of the world right now, why not interview objects of that emblematic hue? Here’s how: 

1. Pick any green object from your surroundings: leaf, grass, shirt, verdigris statuette, kid snot, yogurt lid, etc. This is now your interview subject and also your title: “I Interview [X]”.
2. Write down 3 basic questions for your subject about what it’s like being green. (e.g. “Are you jealous of red?”; “Is it easy being green?”; “What is money to you?”) 
3. Ask your subject the questions and carefully record their responses. Try to voice the replies in the form and manner of the chosen subject. (e.g. From a green statue: “Red has nothing on me. She could never sit still this long” or from a blade of grass: “Being me is an easy reaching for light.”). 
4. You should now have 3 questions and their accompanying responses for your poem. Use the first line to set the scene of the interview, like a good news broadcast. (e.g. “Here I am at the local public library speaking today with Alex’s hunter green sweater.”)
5. The rest of the poem should alternate between the questions and the green subject’s responses. Feel free to leave the poem in the interview/dialogue Q&A form. Bonus points for rendering an enticing interview – maybe the subject walks out in a huff, or perhaps the subject flips the question back on the interviewer (“Actually, no, that’s not the truth, Ellen…”). Because green loves to linger, try to make the poem at least 10 lines long. Go wild! 

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Adrian Dallas Frandle (he/they) is a poet, editor, educator, & former chef. “Book of Extraction: Poems with Teeth” was published in 2023 by Kith Books. Recent work featured in Poet Lore, Honey Literary, HAD and elsewhere. Adrian also pens a monthly poetry column for the local paper The Stratford Crier. Read more at adriandallas.com

Write about a moment of misconnection—mis-seeing, mishearing, or misremembering. You may write about a small moment (walking around your neighborhood, you think a wrapper is a flower), a big event (a family remembers an important day differently than you do), or something in the middle. 

Write into the relationship between these two memories, objects, or sounds. Is there tension or closeness? What might their similarities, and differences, reveal? Your poem can also reflect this relationship visually—showing two things running parallel, in dialogue or disagreement, or meeting and melding.

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Millie Tullis (she/they) is a writer, editor, teacher, and researcher. She holds an MFA from George Mason University and an MA in American Studies & Folklore from Utah State University. These Saints are Stones (Signature Books, 2026) is her first full-length collection. Millie’s digital micro-chap, Dream With Teeth, was published by Ghost City Press in 2023. Her poetry has been published in Sugar House Review, Stone Circle Review, Cimarron Review, Ninth Letter, SWWIM, Moist Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Millie is the Editor-in-Chief of Psaltery & Lyre and Exponent II. Raised in northern Utah, she lives and works in upstate South Carolina.

May Swenson’s “Question” is one of those poems perpetually knocking around in my mind. Her questions focus on  the self unhoused from the body. While you are still embodied, what questions do you have for the body? The one you live in, the one you are, right now. 

Question by May Swenson (1913–1989)

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do 
when you are fallen
 
Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt
 
Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead
 
How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye
 
With cloud for shift
how will I hide?

 
From New & Selected Things Taking Place by May Swenson. Copyright © 1978 by the estate of May Swenson. Reprinted by permission of the estate of May Swenson. All rights reserved.

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Zoë Ryder White’s (she/her) first full-length collection, The Visible Field was published by River River Books in February, 2026. She authored the chapbooks Via Post (Sixth Finch Press, 2022) and HYPERSPACE (Factory Hollow Press, 2020) and co-authored A Study in Spring (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2015) and Elsewhere (Sixth Finch Press, 2020) with Nicole Callihan. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.

Find an object with some words on it. Preferably a kitschy one. If you don’t have one to hand, consider popping into your nearest Goodwill or antique store or gift shop that sells reprehensibly cheaply made calendars. (The best part is you don’t even need to buy the thing, just see the words on it. But if it’s a small shop maybe consider supporting them, especially if you find a cute embroidered pillow or can’t-leave-without-it button.) The point is to find some words from this object that either directly are, or that flirt with, cliché. Preferably choose the biggest howler you can find, something you couldn’t imagine putting in a poem with a straight face. Then, even if you have to modify or fragment or abecedarianize or whatever those too-banal-to-handle words, write a poem with them in it. (Bonus points if they end the poem.)

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Tom Snarsky (he/him) is the author of Light-Up Swan and Reclaimed Water (Ornithopter Press), A Letter From The Mountain & Other Poems (Animal Heart Press), and MOUNTEBANK (Broken Sleep Books). His chapbook Tired Light is forthcoming from Thirty West Publishing House in October. He lives in the mountains of northwestern Virginia with his wife Kristi and their cats.

My favorite line from Wes Anderson’s film Asteroid City is “Everything is connected but nothing is working.” Spend some time considering this phrase and use it to begin a poem where robust connection contributes to rupture. Resist the obvious examples emerging from our current cultural and political climate. Don’t mention or allude to social media or tech in general. Look more for small, subtle instances that no one would otherwise know about.

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Lee Potts (he/him) is the editor-in-chief of Stone Circle Review and the author of two poetry chapbooks: We’ll Miss the Stars in the Morning (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and And Drought Will Follow (Frosted Fire, 2021). From 2020 to 2023, he served as the poetry editor at Barren Magazine and was co-editor of Painted Bride Quarterly in the late 80s and early 90s. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review, UCity Review, Firmament, Moist Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He lives just outside of Philadelphia with his wife, the last kid still at home, and two cats, Franny and Zooey.