Write a 12-line rhythmically charged poem in which you slant rhyme (at least twice) the name of the last official indicted from the Tr*mp administration. Reference the most recent climate change related disaster. Address by first name one of the 27 migrants who have died in ICE custody since the beginning of 2026. End with the instructions given to you by a parent or guardian on what you should do when waking from a nightmare.
Write a poem as an acrostic of the name of a person you love who is most vulnerable to US government policies. Include a quote (unattributed) from a writer killed by an authoritarian regime or a line in which you complete the phrase:
“I have birthed _______________ and buried_________________”
End with a line that snaps like a turnstile at your back, that closes like an iron gate behind you.
Typographically represent the 650 miles of border wall teetering on the 2,000-mile US-Mexico boundary. Write a 3-word refrain that could be used as a chant to tear the shroud of normalcy. Answer the question: What brought your parents to the place they birthed you? End with a line so open it would allow both a child and an endangered Mexican gray wolf to step through.
Begin with the city from which you write. Use your five senses to describe the most recently gentrified neighborhood. Personify a “For Sale” sign or an underfunded public school. Do not include an image of a unhoused person.
Write a 48-line poem in which each line ends with you claiming “executive privilege” or some variation of that phrase. Answer the question: What do you call someone who cannot speak and comes without a name? Reference the last time you were terrified by a cop.
End with a metaphor that gasps for air or water
or end with a couplet that screeches like a line drawn in the dirt.
Write a poem that binds you and your reader as tightly as the zip ties encircling protestors’ wrists. Use empathy, compassion, complicity. Include the all reasons why you have not placed your body in the streets or the courts to protect the person you love who is most vulnerable to the state. Address that person. End with a line that moans like gas entering your tank or end with a line that divides nothing
In couplets, describe the opening shot of a movie you would make to depict the events of the past year. Slant rhyme the name of at least one known Russian hacking virus. Describe a monument, then deface it.
End by completing the phrase:
I would _______________ 2,000 miles to end _______________.
Write a poem that records all the new developments that have occurred in our country’s continued assault on migrants and/or other nonwhite bodies while you were writing any one of the above poems.
Make a list of words that sound like shots being fired on a residential street or that sound like children being herded into cages. Create a poem around these words. It should not rhyme.
