prompt: write something based off of another piece of writing, art, music, etc! maybe an ode to or a commentary on it– whatever feels right.

prompt: write about stones as keepers of stories and witnesses to history. what silent wisdom do things like stones have, with their enduring presence?

prompt: think about the absence of something and how the shape it once filled & now leaves affects things. is it good? sad? bittersweet? write about it.

The living room is heavy with the glow of the single working bulb in the overhead light– the rest flickering softly every now and again. R strokes his thumb across the back of her hand, pressing it into the dining table just a little more than he meant to, and she just looks down. His hands are more calloused with every drive, and they feel less and less like the ones she knows.

“I’m sorry.” His breath hitches in his throat and he swallows, not knowing how to try again. “I know it’s not what you want.”

Alin doesn’t know where to start and just purses her lips– chest growing tighter, teeth grinding against each other, anxiety overflowing. “Yeah.”

“What can I do?”

She just sighs, and it’s so shaky she can’t even feign being mad. “Not leave? Not again. Not every time you’re asked to.” Her voice started to crack. “Just give me a little longer with you for once.”

It would be a lie for R to say he wished he could; he’s not someone who just does his job because he has to. He loves it, and he loves her, too, and it’s an overwhelming tray of dishes to balance. He thinks of working as a waiter, and misses it for a moment. There weren’t all these fights, then.

“You know I can’t, Al– I have to go. It’s not long, just 16 days this time.”

“Jesus, R, that’s 16 days and 16 nights, and it’s ‘not long’? Soon enough I'll be writing the next Scheherazade to fill the time.”

“Come on, now– take a second. Think about it. I know it feels like a long time, but you have work, too, and we can check in. It’s not like we won’t talk.”

She’s silent again, and he’s fucked it up severely. Nuggets of wisdom from a truck driver can’t do much but hurt for someone in love with one.

prompt: write about digital ghosts. explore the remnants of a person– a digital footprint, if you will– that lingers even after active online presence fades. what does it mean for us to have two selves– the real life, which is ever-changing, and the online, which will always be every version of you at once, keeping the old and new.

you are born again on a motherboard— pins, tapes, boxes like the warehouse you work in, just bringing you back to somewhere you don’t need/want to be. you opened this computer to write and now you’re in a green and gray world like zuckerberg probably wants, and it’s being trapped again.

the screen hums somewhere far above you, and little phosphors and LEDs seem to flicker– almost imperceptibly, if you weren’t also so small. this is where you hide every day, when your brain shifts into a different space at night, and suddenly you’re in REM, and you think you’re gone from the world, but you could never be gone.

not when you’re stored in something like this– so powerful, all knowing the second you open it. and here you are, again, and here you will be. your computer is littered with little gravestones: here lies your 2018 tumblr blog, still stored. here lies your instagram post from when you still loved her. here is the you that you were when no one was watching, or maybe everyone was watching, because everyone can watch.

you are five hundred little ghosts inside every machine you or anyone else has ever used. you are five hundred yous. every ‘you’ you could think to create will be here. just open up.

prompt: this one’s more open-ended; I just want you to think and write about jellyfish, because i love them and i’m feeling like hearing about what they mean to you! here’s a playlist that makes me happy and might inspire you.

prompt: think of a moment that’s both nostalgic and visceral. it can be old or new, but something that feels both vague and like you can still feel it in your skin, muscle, and bones. write about it however feels right.

 a friar with eyes open wide, chest heaving—
the night pressing down             its edge against his stomach,
a razor’s edge, old hair unearthed and joining the new:
the blood cleanly streaming and his body compressing
as he stares      his ceiling in a new light     like the stars,
unearthed from a city’s sky,        a whimper from his throat
and he can’t take the way his guts are spilling around his lungs,
like fat overflowing      his waistband hidden, eyes down
and ashamed—    so ashamed of a dream,     of loving,
wanting to feel nourished, even if that means overflowing
any kind of containment—      wondering if he can still be God’s
if he must       be his own, if he knows     how 

prompt: think about undercurrents as you write– movements and energies that flow beneath surfaces. what surfaces do they lay beneath? is it an undertone in skin or a song, a literal current, a political movement?

the fool

     sheets sweat around me, wrapping me in,
                           pushing them off– the weight of a man,
              heavy with ripped tendons & seams–
my body tugged toward the cutting board,
slicing peaches & nectarines, blade sliding against the flesh,
crushing– sweet juice spilling	          down the handle, staining wood.
    i press it to my mouth, grooves of my thumb against my lips,
            sweet sap filling my mouth– like how i thought, at 6,
                          hot oil	          must taste,
             betrayed by a loving image,
suddenly a cartoon seeing stars
              dancing around me, closing in,
eyes wide, little pop rocks daggers in my mouth that
            slough chunks off my	  hot-to-the touch cheeks,
like shoveling ice off a car              (just more unwanted stuff–
            “ who needs so much skin,             protection? ”)
and the stars fill my mind            again, pulling
me off to bed for sleep, melting into unchanged sheets,
              the cotton cutting me–        rotting my body–
and my cheeks            healing

prompt: look for patterns in chaotic & ‘random’ events, experiences, behaviors, etc. these could be in nature, in our own emotions & actions (or inactions), in the structure of a city, in a computer, in a body. do these patterns uncover an underlying order or meaning? are they coincidental?

prompt: write about brief encounters, fleeting moments, first impressions. what do these leave behind for us?

prompt: write about evolution and devolution. how do we unravel & re-ravel? think about what histories our bodies & communities & species & worlds are made of.

prompt: consider ‘trace elements’-- barely noticeable things and what they change. think butterfly effect! are their effects expected & small or disproportionate? is a ‘trace element’ an extra bit of DNA? is it some milk in a loaf of bread?

prompt: write about or use asymmetry in your writing. what is the intrigue in imbalance? maybe work with different-sized stanzas or long, long sentences followed by short ones, or think about how no two bodies are the same, nor two halves of the same body, or how the feeling of a painting shifts with where the objects sit.

author’s note: the second i decided to write this about my body, i knew it couldn’t be good– it just had to be a love letter. enjoy.

prompt: explore the softness & blurring of edges—dawn/dusk, the place between sleep and wakefulness, transitions from youthfulness to adulthood and adulthood to old age. what do those borders & changes feel like, look like, smell like?

prompt: write a piece that uses all or most of this pool of words– glisten, slow, starlight, fruit, molten, calm.

prompt: try to make your writing as silent as possible. i know it's a weird prompt-- don't take it too seriously. have fun. what does it mean for writing to be quiet?

prompt: explore the concept of time in your writing. play with the idea of how we perceive passing time [linear/cyclical/all at once/not at all] and make it weird and surreal, or maybe go more classic & write some fun time travel/time loop fiction. how does time shape us?

i scratch at a scab and make new scar– pull apart the deep purple, the hardened salt flats on my skin, the new blemish. i think of sliding down the concrete stairs on my knees– ripping them raw, blood trails, cells scattered, little bits of skin like pilling on a sweater. dark wrinkles spread across my knuckle where the scab was– where the burn was, where i disregarded myself [the world disregarded me]. every acne scar across my chin, cheek, shoulder blade– the boils that speckle dark corners of my skin and leave me with little slits and stretched skin. this skin is some map, some novel in need of a translator.

prompt: try writing in the second person. address your audience and sit with them as you tell your story. see how this direct connection affects how you write.

author’s note: i promise i'm okay-- this one isn't about me. sort of odd how we tend to assume poetry must always be autobiographical, honestly, but that's beside the point.

prompt: write a piece in which you blend two physical senses. maybe focus in on the taste or shape of words, or the feel of an old memory. imagine & sink into those sensations and see what comes up.

prompt: explore a life cycle in some kind of writing. for example, you could use metamorphosis, diapause/hibernation, paedogenesis [very weird], puberty, the salmon life cycle, the amphibian life cycle, or something else entirely! you don't have to be direct-- just start here and get inspired.

prompt: take time to explore different structures of whatever you like to write. for poetry, consider writing a pantoum, ghazal, or abecedarian (some of my favorites). for an essay or fiction, consider writing vignettes, something in epistolary form, a diptych/triptych piece, a frame story, or a circular narrative.

prompt: write about echoes, sound, and reverberation. what is an echo– just sound or something more? how can it reverberate through past, present, and future? can emotion be an echo in that way? what else can be?

prompt: fuck salvador dali for being evil. that said, write a piece inspired by two famous dali paintings, persistence of memory and the elephants [shown below]. consider exploring movement, slowness/speed, heat/cold, and warped sensations.

Grains of sand melt away, coming together like mango sticky rice under my feet. The sun is hot and I cannot stand to sleep, dreaming more waking nightmares than I ever have before.

Above, dead trees bend their spindly hairless bodies toward me, like maybe I am the brutal sun that could heal them at a lower dosage– like they are leaning in closer to listen, thinking maybe they’d understand me if they could just hear a bit clearer.

I imagine them hairier– flourishing– with a thicket covering their now-bare chests and limbs. The sun bears down on me, and the image melts away. I wonder if it is punishment for imagining under such harsh conditions. At a time like this, I should be preoccupied with surviving.

The heat seeps in through my pores and my sweat seeps out. The sky is so many colors it shouldn’t be, and I wonder what time it is. I wonder if it is a mirage, and how long it’ll be until I start seeing oases and grand palaces.

My eyes start to close, and I can taste water and grains of rice. I think it might be sand on my tongue.

prompt: write about a worldly place that is a threshold for you. this can mean anything-- maybe it's some place between end and beginning, forward and backward, past and present, here and there, friends and lovers, or something else entirely!

prompt: write about what ways writing plays a role in your life-- why do you like it? is it hard? what's your relationship with it? be as abstract or direct as you'd like.

i’ve been storytelling for as long as i can remember. i wrote my first picture book when i was 5, in montessori, and my second in the 2nd grade, and my third in freshman year of high school. i played pretend through elementary school like my life depended on it– something i even wrote an essay on [which i can hopefully share if it gets published in a mag i submitted to… fingers crossed!]. it’s something that’s always been a part of my life. i’ve always wanted to tell the stories i felt should be told.

it’s hard to write, though. it always has been for me– i’m quite the slow writer, and i need a lot of breathing room between pieces. i need to absorb a lot to write a little. actually writing something isn't hard, but getting myself to is. chronic illness has made it even harder. but it’s worth it. i love getting notice small, beautiful things and put them into words. i love getting to hate and really love this world-- to want to watch it grow and be better and adore the beautiful things i see in it already. i love putting that to words.

writing means a lot of different things to me now– much more than it used to. i feel my drive to write has always been more serious, but i used to actually write simply because it’s fun. that’s a beautiful reason to write, but it’s interesting to see how my conscious reasoning behind writing has changed.

i think it’s telling that i started this piece that’s supposed to be about my relationship to writing talking about storytelling. writing is just part of it for me. storytelling in any form is how we keep ourselves alive, no? it’s how we connect, how we learn, how we tell the stories of our people. it’s how we grow. it’s what teaches us our first morals and principles.

storytelling is quite spiritual, i feel. it connects you to so much you can’t quite put a finger on. lately, i’ve felt connected to my ancestors when i write. i can almost feel their hands on my shoulders and their soft, wrinkled hands pushing bread into my mouth. i think of the nahuatl people i once was– the way i’m more spanish than i am truly mexican, and the way i know a lot of my ancestors would hate me and the ones i love most would love me just as much. i think about reconnecting, and i know writing is reconnecting.

as much as i love that feeling, i write mainly for community– that’s why i created this club. i want to push myself and the people who read what i write to understand more and discover more and search for what is hard to search for. everyone grows when writing happens, and i love being a part of that. i love making and trading zines, and writing blog posts, and writing poetry that fights for what i feel it needs to, and writing essays [academic and personal] on what i want to share, and telling stories that are hard to hear in all this world’s noise, and writing on protest posters & postcards to representatives & walls that shouldn’t exist.

i don’t think i’ve motivated a ton of progress in our world because of writing or anything, but i know i’ve made small changes here and there, and that’s enough. i want to go into journalism, and keep writing creatively, too, and i want to make that bigger change, but i know that if nothing else, i’ve done something i love and changed my own heart. if nothing else, i want to keep doing that.