I heard a great variety of poems last evening at the Third Thursday open mic at Ziggi’s in Westminster, CO. We had people read whom we have not heard from in quite a while. Sheryl Luna did a great feature slot, and I heard something that tickled those synapses in my brain that recognize a poem embryo. It’s the last item in the list below. There is no logic to any of this, but here’s a list of poem prompts that I keep in my “carry book,” the notebook that lives in my purse.

• the last lemon cake
• coffee and a lemon square (yeah, I like lemon flavored sweets)
• digital immigrant in a pixilated world
• “large reverberations in small events” (from D. T. Max’s bio of David Foster Wallace)
• things that can shatter
• small things that make me happy
• dinner in dystopia ( a prompt from a Friday 500, Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop)
• “Mean things mean things.” (quoted but I don’t know by whom)
• novocaine of noise
• identical twins/blue shoes/the revolver (don’t ask, no idea where it came from)
• time as a red illusion
• ponies going ’round

If you can use any of these, please do. And I would be happy to see the results. It’s going to be a hot day in CO, a good time to hole up in an air conditioned coffee shop. Cool air and hot poems. Perfect.