Fiction + non-fiction prompt: Pick a scar (physical or emotional). How did you/your character get it?
Poetry prompt: What shape is your scar and what is contained within that shape?

Prompt: Write a poem about those in-between, liminal spaces

A hotel bar, an airport terminal. Those are the places in which you are simultaneously aimless and en route. Those are the spaces that flood with possibility yet are so painfully mundane. At the hotel bar, you can be anyone. In the sense that you can choose to present however you wish. Also in the sense that you are a passing face in the crowd, anonymous. An airport terminal is a bridge to adventure, one in which you are the main character. Though before you set off, first navigate through the unremarkable mire of humanity. In these purgatories, anything goes. Down an old fashioned at 11 AM, who’s to judge? Wear the bedazzled Crocs, nobody cares. Once you’re out of there, there will be no memory of it, because all instances in these in-between spaces collapse into one dimension, a line from A to B.

Prompt: Imagine your life, or better yet some specific slice of your life, as a best-selling book. Now write the jacket copy or summary for the back cover.

Tucked away in the bustling desert neighborhood of El Cajon, Rebecah’s life was seemingly all the same everyday. A ground hogs day of sorts. It’s not until she receives a mysterious request one day to apply for a managerial position, that everything comes into question. Will she ever move out of her mom’s senior living community? Does life exist outside of household chores and zoom calls? R. Corbin takes us on a ride through the rich inner landacape that is the mind. When you can’t change the landscape of your exterior world, can you change the landscape of your internal world?

“A gallows humor that challenges the exceptionally mundane.” - Managing Editor, Random House

“Corbin leaves you frustrated, inspired, curious.” - Bob, Penguin Classics

Prompt: Take a creation myth or folk tale from your heritage or a fairy tale you know and give it a new ending. Alternatively, just take inspiration from a tale’s setting, one particular scene, or spinoff a side character and run with it.

The Golem

I’ve set up a cardboard stand, the kind I would have sold lemonade at when I was a little kid. ANTI-BULLY PROTECTION, reads the sign. I lean back and adjust my glasses, looking up and down the hall past decorated lockers and unisex bathroom signs for potential customers. The administration set this up, I remind myself-I’m not to blame for making a racket out of it.

Jake Levine sits in his folding chair behind me, still as a stone, unnaturally muscular for a 17-year-old. Sometimes he scratches the tattoo on his forehead absentmindedly: TRUTH in thug-lyfe print. He’s had it forever, but he must still have a phantom itch. I won’t deny that the guy is in a weird position. After enough suspensions and run-ins with law enforcement, the administration offered him a deal: patrol the halls and step in to defend bullying victims. But bullies aren’t stupid, and the main perps know to watch out when Jake passes, so forgive me for offering people a more sustainable protection model… and making a neat little profit off it, too.

The cardboard makes a whiff sound and I jump to attention as a customer approaches. She looks like she’s ten years old, but I know for a fact that she’s a sophomore in Mr. Henneke’s homeroom class. Tania? Tiah? Something like that. I try to keep tiny dollar signs from lighting up my pupils as she tears up, telling me how the senior girls like to pretend she’s a lost middle schooler who wandered into the building from St. Agnes across the street. I look back at Jake. He returns my gaze with empty eyes that spark with life only when I explain his assignment. Walk five paces behind her. To start, just give them a scary look.. yeah, that’s the one. He continues watching me as I collect Tara’s (?) handful of coins. I pass one to him, and his unfocused gaze doesn’t waver as he pops it into his mouth and swallows. I swallow too, and remind myself that I hold the power here. He’s just a tool of the administration, I remind myself. He’s doing this because it’s the only way to get around the dress code and avoid them making him wear concealer over the forehead tattoo. I’m making a savvy business decision working with him. I’m on the side of justice.

I repeat my mantra until the fear and guilt fade, then restore the salesman’s grin on my face and look around, expectant, for the next potential customer.

Jake Levine sits in his folding chair behind me, eyes burning a hole in the back of my neck, still as a stone.

Prompt: Take words from the title and/or lyrics of a favorite song and work it into a microstory, reflection, or poem.

Beyoncé

Ahh, all the argent loyalists
Night fired by glittered silver
Soft ballads begin before
Rebirth, Renaissance.
Four on the floor
As the beat spins us through
Beyoncé’s future, spilling
Into the bone-deep beats,
Heralding: I’m That Girl.
We listen in rapture
Dance becomes liberation,
The key that twists off
Our personal chains.
House and vogue combine
In a tribute to gay culture
This night of men in mesh
Women interlocking hands.
Baptism by beats
Souls unleashed.

Prompt: Take a creation myth or folk tale from your heritage or a fairy tale you know and give it a new ending. Alternatively, just take inspiration from a tale’s setting, one particular scene, or spinoff a side character and run with it.

"Are you serious? I just bought that matka (clay pot) from the market last week!," Naina yelled at the boy, who could pass as a man any day now.

He laughed, butter dripping down his face and hands.

"This is not okay, Krishna," Naina sighed as she put down her bag of groceries. "It's honestly really annoying, and I'm not sure why you think all of the gopis (milkmaids) are swooning after you. It takes them a really long time to milk the cows and make the butter."

"What are you talking about? They love me!" Krishna hopped down from the clay bench he sat on, bending over to pick up the larger pieces of the matka he broke, not bothering with smaller, harder to find ones.

"This is all because of Yashoda. I was just telling her at the market that she gives you too much freedom. She's waiting for you at home, by the way, making your favorite dish."

"Why can't I just stay and have dinner with you, Naina Ma?"

"Because you've already broken my matka, and now I have to spend my evening trying to salvage whatever butter is left and clean up your mess."

"I'll help you! You have no one to help you here anyway."

She stared at him.

"I'd rather be alone than deal with the men we have in Braj. You should really consider changing your ways before it's too late for you. You're aging out of your days of 'innocent' butter stealing."

Ending 1:

Krishna laughed in a way that unsettled Naina as though he was untouchable. Maybe he was, Naina thought

Ending 2:

Krishna laughed in a way that unsettled Naina as though he was untouchable.

Naina turned away and started to make a mental list of the gopis to invite them over for chai the next day. She worried no one else was as concerned that Krishna was getting older. His innocent, boyhood charm was getting concerning, almost powerful. She would take on the task of being the safe person the gopis could confide in. She needed them to feel empowered.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.