2025 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 4
For the 2025 November PAD Chapbook Challenge, poets write a poem a day in the month of November. Day 4 is to write a past and/or future poem.
We've made it through Day 3, and here we are facing our first "Two-for-Tuesday" prompt of the month on Day 4. You can pick one of two prompts to write your poem, or write a separate poem for each prompt, or combine the prompts to make your Frankenpoem. Your poem(s), your choice.
For today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
- Write a past poem, and/or...
- Write a future poem.
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.
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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 Past and/or Future Poem:
“To All Poems, Future and Past”
There's no time like the present
to break lines for a moment
and consider what comes next,
whether that's a short story
or poem about gory
untouched memento mori
or metaphor of malice—
perhaps a bust of Pallas—
to parade 'round this palace
made of words and nothing more
as if there were future doors
obscuring forbidden stores
of bold moments left to write
when we only have this night.
