Happy Wednesday, everyone! It's time for a throwback​—to our December Open Mic Online prompt! Check out this awesome poem submitted this month, and send in your own writing to our Submittable to see it featured here in the future!

"View From My Window"

​Delight! To meet in my blue sky
The peep of mountain top
Above scaled roofs that ripple down
In rusty red and brown

​My window does reveal a peak
Of mountain; but alas,
Black as midnight were the sheets
That Dad taped to the glass

​‘What’s a window,’ Dad asks,
‘That brings in light unwanted?’
So I arrived, and to my surprise,
My mountain hopes were stunted

​Argh! It was no small displeasure
To have lost the mountaintops I treasured
Now bodiless tires and sirens from the streets
Raid my ears, thundering across the sheets

​Thus my bedroom window came to be
View-less, peak-less, wind-less
‘At least the sun won’t wake you from sleep,
Snooze-less, dream-less, rest-less’

​But my mornings once began with sun
A warm, bright, natural alarm
Now the sheets played dusk and masked the dawn
Until the tape came undone

​Could a light bulb match the brilliance of sun?
Never: But I still clicked it on
For night seemed present all the day
Until the tape came undone

​The tape came loose and when I shook the blinds
A sheet black as night fell behind;
But only partly did it fall into folds
The rest still remains hanging up high

My window does reveal a peak
(One of the few parts of town I like)
Now black as midnight sheets compete
With hopeful slivers of sunlight

We're trying something a little different this time, reader, so drop your recommendations (book, movie, music, or otherwise) in the comments below! Thanks for submitting, and enjoy the recs!

Check out this neat poem submitted to Open Mic Online last month! Wouldn't be cool if your work was here, too? You can submit at any time through our Submittable portal (click the Open Mic Online tab)!

"october, 2016"
pavement pressed with my permanent footprints
from walking home at 3 in the morning
i can smell the beautifully baked bread at the shop
that stood next to my apartment, awake so early
i saw the moon still shining in the sky
because morning is merely a motion of want
i felt my hands chilled with the october air or the alcohol
i felt my pulse pounding through my skull.
my memory is mostly a miscalculation
so maybe none of this even actually happened,
maybe my brain is just begging to begin anew,
maybe my heart is hoping to hold on to you.
By JB Brackett

Thank you to everyone who submitted to our October short horror prompt! We received some great two-sentence horror stories and eerie haikus; here are some of our favorites! Want to see your work featured here in the future? Submit to Open Mic Online through our Submittable!
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This Halloween, it wasn't the ghosts, skeletons, nor costume-less child that caused her panic but the yellow brew in the glass pot: it was a reminder she came for coffee she never made. Work's cloud was angry; as its thunders struck her head for time wasted, 6 joyful voices sprinted by, a reminder that the true horror of Halloween is an inability to play.
By Venus Alemanji 
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Oh, what disarray—I can’t for the life of me find where I’ve misplaced my hands—under that blanket there, or by my fingernails?—where did I put my hands, my lovely hands that, when I first spotted them in that Boston wedding in 1922, I knew they just had to be mine. But there's the door, at least I have my face made up—oh my, don’t be shy—come on in and let me get a closer look at your lovely green eyes.
By Jasper Lee-Lin
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[untitled]
​I went to the prom,
had nobody to go with,
we had a great time!
By Ella Hoyt
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"waking to a nightmare"
i imagine i
don't daily dream of dying,
but i know better
By James Karroum
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"I open a door"
It is standing—there
In the middle of the hall
A frown on its face
By Jasper Lee-Lin
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