Write about the untouchable. Something out of arm’s reach, like freedom, the stars, or you.
Write an ode to misfits. A poem of praise for those who don’t belong here or there. A lyric ballad for the children of nowhere. Employ the interjection Oh at some point in the poem. Remember it can be used to capture their joy or your pain.
Write a how to poem about something mundane that most people take for granted. How to hear your mother’s voice. How to see the sky. How to trust a man in a uniform. How to breathe.
Write about things that are out of order. Broken vending machines. Raging defense attorneys. This border. This country.
Become that something that doesn’t love a wall. Give it a name. A history. Tell us in verse why it hates walls so desperately. Why we all should.
Write a poem from the point of view of a firefly trapped in a jar with holes hammered into the lid. Make the reader experience what it is to be something small and beautiful locked away into a restrictive space.
Write a persona poem in the voice of something that doesn’t acknowledge the existence of borders: monarch butterflies, FM radio waves, rivers.
Write a sestina where the six repeating words are:
mother
tongue
light
slip
silt
forgive
Write a poem about a young person armed not with a fist or a gun, but an idea. An idea that could free us all.
Write a poem about a door unlocking. Opening. And what it feels like to walk through it without anyone there to tell you, you can’t.
Poems are selected by Poetry Editor Lupe Mendez, the 2022 Texas poet laureate and author of Why I Am Like Tequila. To submit a poem, please send an email with the poem attached to poetry@texasobserver.org. We’re looking for previously unpublished works of no more than 45 lines by Texas poets who have not been published by the Observer in the last two years. Pay is $100 on publication.
The post Poetry Prompts for Detained Children appeared first on The Texas Observer.
