Writing Prompt

Cartes Noires is a creative writing exercise to help you craft the plot for a mystery novel in about 30 minutes using only a standard deck of playing cards and your imagination. With it, it is possible to make an elaborate, whodunnit story on the fly.

I made this experimental poem by reading the alphabet aloud forward and backward. It is also what 2000’s era chat bots sounded like when they talk to each other.

Writing prompts like the snowball poem are fun for discovering unexpected stories. For instance, this poem focuses on a bisexual two-toed sloth hanging out with con artists deep in discussion about matters of national (and psychic) security.

Growing up I heard this story of two Welsh brothers, my ancestors, stowing away on a ship bound for the new continent. Some time later I decided to turn it into a sort of story using a constrained writing system called “the prisoner’s constraint”.