The April Poem A Day Challenge is back

I'm participating in Robert Lee Brewer's* month-long Poem A Day Challenge, as I've done each November and April for the last several years.

At this point my poems are just drafts, but it's fun just to get something down that I can tinker with once the challenge is over. 

Robert's prompts are always interesting. Here's a few poems I've written so far, following the days' prompts.

3. Write a tentative poem. The poem could be about a tentative date, a tentative person, a tentative situation. The narrator could be tentative. The subject could be tentative.

She once said,

I’ll pencil you in.

I bristled.

In fact, I erased her

from my calendar

and datebook entirely.

I’ve also erased her

from my mind.

4. Take the phrase “Hold That (Blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and write the poem. Possible titles include “Hold That Thought,” “Hold That Space,” “Hold That Poem,” or whatever else holds your attention.

Hold That and That and That

It’s always something when I order a meal.

Hold the cheese, the milk, the bacon, the bread.

The list is endless: red meat, wheat, gluten.

I wonder if a time will come

when I’ll be holding so much

that everything I eat

will taste like cardboard.

5. Write a plus poem. Plus can mean a lot of things, and even the act of addition could equate to subtraction.

Today’s list:

Write a poem

Plus

Write a journal entry

Plus

Write a blog post

Plus

Work on novel

Plus

(and this is the most important part)

Monitor the Putting a Face onSuicide page.

All other work stops for that.

* Robert is: Senior Content Editor for Writer's Digest writing community, poet, and father.