The 5-Line Challenge: Featured Poets & More Prompts

Small poems, big thoughts

May 06, 2025

Love words? So do we.

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Recently here at Poetry Rise, we started a poetry micro-series, The 5 Line Challenge. Each week, we ask readers to craft a powerful poem of only five lines, using one of our prompts.

Sometimes the shortest poems are the most impossible to forget. A well-crafted micropoem can distill big emotions into a tiny, powerful package, and it’s often far more accessible to comprehend for the average reader than long, drawn-out epics that read like strange, esoteric riddles (though my favorites to write).

Each week, the Poetry Rise team will shoutout their favorites from those of you who participate (three poems featured per challenge).

Here are our picks from the initial challenge.

Maverick’s Pick: Carolyne’s poem feels like a palm reading of my past: raw, resonant, and quietly powerful. I know this silent, unseen place well. I also know it is a transformative one. Lines like “the ache of almost” and the final T.K.O. ending deliver a gut-punch. What I love most about this poem is how open to interpretation it is. It can be read two competlely different ways, depending on whether you interpet the “Something” as negative or positive. I read the growing “Something” as hope, as light emerging from darkness. From this angle, Carolyne captures the resilience of the human spirit in just a few short lines.

Kayla’s Pick: This poem feels like longing. It conjures the way streetlights bounce off wet pavement in the moonlight and feels like the eyes of a stray cat. The imagery of leaves turning to birds and rain full of holes, lingers, as does the feeling of solitude. Ray has crafted a mood with five lines and a title that bites back with teeth. He doesn’t tell his readers what to feel, but casts a certain midnight magic that pours the sentiment directly into our mugs. He leaves us to decide the nature of the season that isn’t coming. Could it be a different way of life, a better way of being, or just a place with a bit more climate range? It doesn’t matter much because the blood no longer dreams of flying.

Jared’s Pick: Reading this poem, I felt a familiar absence. Through minimalist imagery, using the presence of an everyday object, the writer evokes a lingering intimacy that I can feel from here. Very cool.

This Week’s Prompts

Prompt #1:
Write a 5-line poem that takes place in a dream.
Surreal, strange, or soft around the edges. Anything goes, as long as it feels like it couldn’t quite happen in waking life. Get weird and existential. Get wildly creative. Take us on a journey.

Prompt #2:
Write a 5-line poem as if it were your final message in a bottle.
It floats to shore decades later. What does it say? What words do you want to linger in this world long after you’re gone?

Say less. Mean more. Share yours.

Reply to this Substack thread and drop your 5-line masterpiece in the comments. We’ll feature a few favorites in next week’s roundup — and maybe even on the Poetry Rise page.