2025 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 24
For the 2025 November PAD Chapbook Challenge, poets write a poem a day in the month of November. Day 24 is to write a living creature poem.
For today’s prompt, pick a living creature and write a poem. Your living creature could be human, of course, but also something as big as a blue whale or as small as Nanoarchaeum equitans. And there are no rules against picking living creatures that are fictional, like a luck dragon or Frankenstein's Monster.
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them. If you have a wild idea, follow it.
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Writer's Digest is celebrating our 20th Annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards with new categories and prizes. We’re looking for your best poems of 32 lines or fewer or un-published chapbooks 25 pages or fewer. Any form of poetry is eligible including epic, free verse, odes, pantoums, sonnets, villanelles, and even haiku. This is the only Writer’s Digest competition exclusively for poets. Win cash and an article about you in the July/August issue of Writer’s Digest.
(Note: This is completely separate of the November PAD Chapbook Challenge.)
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Here’s my attempt at a Living Creature Poem:
"Tardigrade"
O sweet, water bear,
to where are you headed
on mountaintops and down
deep in the deepest seas?
Even radiation and outer
space does not faze, thee,
with your short, plump body
and eight legs ending in claws,
but why get caught up
in mere description when
you have so many places to go?
Whether on other creatures
or the wind, may you travel far.
