2022 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 5

For the 2022 November PAD Chapbook Challenge, poets are tasked with writing a poem a day in the month of November before assembling a chapbook manuscript in the month of December. Day 5 gets a bit perilous.

Welcome back!

For today's prompt, write a peril poem. You can be in peril or write about the perilous situation of another. And the peril can be of a variety of levels, from the minor perils of navigating a conversation to the major perils of driving in an ice storm.

Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.

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Write a poem every single day of the year with Robert Lee Brewer's Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming. After sharing more than a thousand prompts and prompting thousands of poems for more than a decade, Brewer picked 365 of his favorite poetry prompts here.

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Here’s my attempt at a Peril Poem:

“At the Castle Anthrax”

Sir Galahad wished to have just a little bit
of peril, but Sir Lancelot thought it too
unhealthy. In fact, the peril was too perilous,
like the flight of an African or European
swallow grasping the husk of a coconut
and searching for the most holy grail
(not to be confused with the holy hand
grenade). But back to the perilous peril,
knights aren't meant to spend the night
in the right castle without a nice shrubbery
and/or whatever it takes to talk about it.
Besides, the system is meant to keep
the peasants repressed with all the violence
inherent in the system. And the black knight
always wins (with or without a flesh wound),
because the llamas and the mooses say so,
and everyone could use a bit of peril or
an allusion to a movie about it. (He said it again!)

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.