PLEASE WRITE ME A POEM PLEASE MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL
By Amelia
“There is a lamp in a motel room. / This lamp is important because it is what you will remember. / Focus on the lamp in great detail, leave out why you are there.”
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Passing Notes: Four Collaborative Writing Exercises for Pen Pals
By Sara Dudo
In preparation for Palette’s Pen Pal Poetry Challenge, opening on September 25, 2025, editor-in-chief Elyssia Nguyen and associate editor Sara Dudo compiled four writing activities to kickstart your writing, and additionally, collaborated in writing four poems for each activity as an example and guide!
Touch my face in the Vietnamese restaurant
By Troy Wong
“As for me I promise I will never ask you to do a dramatic reading // of any of my old Facebook posts, only that you / touch my face in the Vietnamese restaurant”
world history
“in your amniotic chamber, you wrestle / with visions of formation. does time / pass if nobody is around to take note?”
2025 Micro Chapbook Prize: Winners & Finalists
Please join us in congratulating these remarkable poets. Winners were selected by Palette editors.
There’s a tenderness at the end of this poem
“an uncle said the best thing to do to your loved / dead ones is to find them under the rubble. / plant them lillies.”
Twilight Exequy
“one day i’ll trade god for his crimson-lipstick cadillac the permanent moon / and the sublime insignia his tires make kicking gravel down my drive.”
Highway Mothercode
“You tied a red string around my ankle, / saying this is how we will remember, // The faux-umbilical noose criminal”
Osteoporosis Ghazal
“The mug on the table reminds me / of myself: hairline fracture across its midline, out seeps the milk.”