National Poetry Month: Prompt 22, from Violeta Garcia-Mendoza

Open Tab Cascade Prompt

Write a poem collaging phrases found within the open tabs of your internet browser,
Substack, email app, texts, or any other open windows on your computer or smart
phone.

For an extra challenge, embrace echoes and repetition by loosely following the cascade
form (diagrammed below and further explained here).

A
B
C
D

a
b
c
A

d
e
f
B

g
h
i
C

j
k
l
D

The below poem is from Violeta Garcia-Mendoza’s poetry collections SONGS FOR THE LAND-BOUND (June Road Press, 2024), and exemplifies the above prompt and cascade form.

OPEN TAB CASCADE (poem by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza)

This year's color trends: darkroom, blank canvas, blush. Click for a complete beginner's guide.
Untitled. All month, rain. I'm trying to remember the art of turbulence—how to tell the conditional

from the subjunctive. There are questions I haven't been asking: What paths are lost if what we hope is true? How do we write?
What school of philosophy are you-darkroom,

blank canvas, blush? Here's what I should have said: self-portrait as stray attention, shortcut, comment thread. Dear life, I'm trying to write a draft a day— untitled or a beginner's guide to rain. At what depth

does the river reach flood stage? View the damage.
Watch again? Are you a soldier, poet, or king?
Choose your fighter: memory, art, turbulence.
Let this darkness be the shared language of the game.

The poem begins with us surviving what comes next. Upload your own design: if, where, when. Say it another way: the conditional, the subjunctive.

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is the author of Songs for the Land-Bound (June Road Press, 2024)— a 2025 National Indie Excellence Award finalist, 2025 Eric Hoffer Award honorable mention, and 2025 First Horizon Award finalist. In 2022, she received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation for her poetry. Violeta’s work has appeared in Sugar House Review, The Dodge, RHINO, SWWIM, Psaltery & Lyre, and elsewhere. Her poem “Hiking Moraine State Park” was recently featured on an episode of The Slowdown, chosen by Maggie Smith. Violeta lives with her family on a small certified wildlife habitat in suburban western Pennsylvania.