2024 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 10

For the 2024 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 10 is to write a poem with 10 or fewer words.

Wow! I can't believe we're already a third of the way through this challenge (after today's poem anyway).

For today’s prompt, write a poem with 10 or fewer words. Keep it short, keep it poetic. (And if you want to bend the rules a bit, I'll allow people to repeat the same word; so theoretically, a poet could write a 30-word poem that only uses 10 unique words.)

Also, for inspiration, I wanted to share this fun 8-worder from earlier in the month by Amy Hadley for Day 6's poetry prompt (to write an advice poem):

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

Note on commenting: If you wish to comment on the site, go to Disqus to create a free new account, verify your account on this site below (one-time thing), and then comment away. It's free, easy, and the comments (for the most part) don't require manual approval like on the old site.

*****

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 hundreds of thousands of poems for more than a decade, Brewer picked 365 of his favorite poetry prompts here.

*****

Here’s my attempt at a 10 Words or Fewer Poem:

“Independents,” by Robert Lee Brewer

We followed them to the cliff
but didn't jump off. 

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.