2025 April PAD Challenge: Day 22

On the 22nd day of the 2025 April Poem-A-Day Challenge, writers are challenged with the fourth Two-for-Tuesday prompt of the month.

It's time for the fourth (but not final) Two-for-Tuesday prompt:

  • Write a tell me poem and/or...
  • Write a don't tell me poem.

You get to decide what that means; you might even tell me in your poem.

Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.

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Write a poem every single day of the year with Robert Lee Brewer's Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming. After sharing more than a thousand prompts and prompting thousands of poems for more than a decade, Brewer picked 365 of his favorite poetry prompts here.

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Here’s my attempt at a Tell Me and/or Don't Tell Me Poem:

“Tell the Tale,” by Robert Lee Brewer

Tell me something I haven't heard before--
true or false, as long as it won't bore me
into a slumber on a summer day
when a subtle breeze might blow me away
to Savannah, Charleston, or New Orleans,
wherever ghost stories find they're adored.

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.