2020 April PAD Challenge: Day 23
Write a poem every day of April with the 2020 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a “Social Blank” poem.
We only have a week of this challenge remaining. Let’s make it count.
For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Social (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles could include: “Social Distancing at the Grocery Store,” “Social Media Trolls,” “Social Club,” and/or “Social Distortion.” Heck, flipping the script to come up with a title like “Ice Cream Social” would totally work too.
Remember: These prompts are just springboards; you have the freedom to jump in any direction you want. In other words, it’s more important to write a new poem than to stick to the prompt.
Here’s my attempt at a Social Blank Poem:
“Social Anxiety”
When I was a child, so the story goes,
I would run up to strangers at Kings Island
and give them hugs. I don’t know when it began,
or why, but I now feel a pit of desperation
in my stomach when I have to interact
with strangers and even friends. It’s like
wanting to jump into the water but fearing
the fall, the temperature, and what may be
hidden beneath the water’s surface. Or like
when I was a child needing to relieve myself
at a family reunion, so the story goes,
and they told me to go behind the tree,
which I circled multiple times before asking,
“Which side is the behind side of the tree?”
And they circle that story like a tree, and I find
myself still unable to figure out which way to go.
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.
