The Best from the Weekly Prompts

For years, we’ve been offering a prompt at the end of every Rattlecast episode, to encourage folks to write new poems for the next week’s open lines. At the end of every episode, Timothy Green announced the next week’s prompt. Write yours within the next week to share it on the open lines, and submit it to this category by the end of the month to have it considered. Series editor Katie Dozier will select her favorite poems, which will be published as one of Rattle.com’s daily poems. The winner each month will also receive $100.

Submissions for the Prompt Poem of the Month are not anonymized—we still want to encourage everyone to share their weekly poems on the Rattlecast’s open lines—but choices are still being made solely based on the poem’s merit. Submit as many poems as you’d like to this category, but only poems written for the current month’s prompts. A winner will be chosen after the first week of every month.

Find a list of our past prompts here.

Current Prompts

February 23rd: Write a poem that includes an unexpected vow.

February 16th: Write a poem that includes a memory you’ve never shared. Include dialogue.

February 9th: Write an elegy that’s not about a person.

February 2nd: Write a poem that explores the perspective of the other side, and arrives somewhere opposite to where the poem begins.

 

 

Monthly Winners

	Dick Westheimer	Poem in Which I Inspect the Fabric Care Label (January 2025)
	Jared Campbell	Injustice (December 2024)
	Kelly Bennett	All the Fixings (November 2024)
	Hemat Malak	Smoking Ceremony (October 2024)
	Katie Beswick	Ruderal (September 2024)
	Mike Bayles	Abyss (August 2024)
	Jaymee Thomas	Voice Lessons (July 2024)
	Dick Westheimer	Where Does a Person with Aphantasia … (June 2024)
	Suzanne Lummis & Ron Koertge	Picnic (May 2024)
	James Washington Jr.	Credit (Apr. 2024)
	Nancy Beagle	The Wedding Doll (Mar. 2024)
	Kelly Sargent	The ‘L’ Word (Feb. 2024)
	Lynne Knight	Body Talk (Jan. 2024)
	Cindy Guentherman	About Those Apples (Dec. 2023)
	J.B. Penname	The End of Hurt Is Not Healing (Nov. 2023)
	Tammy Greenwood	The Accordian (Oct. 2023)
	Farah Ali	White Rabbit (Sep. 2023)
	Sharon Ferrante	Six Senryu from the Kitchen (Aug. 2023)