2020 April PAD Challenge: Day 17

If you didn’t catch it yet, I’m super excited today, because a dream of mine has become reality with the release of a new digital guide: The Complete Guide to Poetic Forms by yours truly. Click here to learn more.

For today’s prompt, write an exotic poem. Set your poem in an exotic locale. Or maybe write about an exotic person, animal, or technology. And remember that your everyday things may be exotic to someone else. Honestly, I’ve found poets are a breed of exotic creature whenever I’m in a room full of “normal” adults.

Remember: These prompts are just springboards; you have the freedom to jump in any direction you want. In other words, it’s more important to write a new poem than to stick to the prompt.

Here’s my attempt at an Exotic Poem:

“The Tiger King’s Golden Shovel”

I cannot escape the tiger
king or social or the tiger
king on Netflix. He is burning
across media like a bright
star, but I don’t want to take in
this show, though the king seems like the
big thing of the moment. Tonight,
I’d rather watch paint dry or what-
ever stray movie immortal
cockroaches care about. My hand
changes the next selection or
I find I must avert my eye
until I can. Change. If I could,
I would block it from every frame
of reference with telepathy,
because what I see is fearful
with no trace of Blake’s symmetry!

Robert Lee BrewerAuthor

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 Solving the World's Problems, 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.