🐘 Nancy is a storyteller, music blogger, humorist, poet, curveballer, noir dreamer 🐘
Written for dVerse Prosery: Something
Shuffling Overhead. Our host, Kim, invites
us to write a piece of prose in 144 words or
less, incorporating a line from the poem
“Body” by Alice Oswald seen here:
“the dead were settling in under their mudroom
and something was shuffling overhead”
Written for dVerse Prosery – “Tribute to
Gordon Downie”. Our host, Mish, asks us
to write a piece of prose using this line
from Downie’s poem, “Starpainters”:
“The Starpainters are taking over now.”
Continue reading “Dreams From An Unfinished Mind”Written for dVerse Prosery – Luminous
Accountings. Our host, Dora, invites us
to write a piece of prose in no more than
144 words incorporating the following
line from “King of the River” by Stanley
Kunitz: “…and the iridescent image
swims through a mirror that flows.”
Written for dVerse Prosery: “Of Jaguars
and the Night”. Our host, Merril, invites us
to write prose in 144 words incorporating the
line below from “Jaguar Song” by Arthur Sze.
Written for dVerse Prosery: A View from the Hills.
Our host, Sanaa, asks us to write a piece of prosery
of up to 144 words, including the line shown below.
This is where the prompt took me.
“The hills so dry, so dense the underbrush, that
where I pushed my way the giant hush was changed
to soft explosions.” From the poem “On a View of
Pasadena from the Hills” by Yvor Winters.
Written for dVerse Prosery Pub – Publication.
where our host, Melissa, has asked us to write a
144-word piece of prosery incorporating the lines
from Emily Dickinson’s poem: “Publication – is
the Auction of the Mind”. Here’s my response.
Written for dVerse Prosery – “Winter Lull” – hosted by
Merril who has asked us to write a 144-word
piece of prose, including the poetic verse
shown below. This is my response.
“It all belies our existence; we wait, and are still denied.”
from “Winter-Lull” by D.H. Lawrence
Written for dVerse Prosery: T.S. Eliot and
J. Alfred Prufrock. Björn, our host, challenges
us to write a poem of 144 words including the
highlighted line from “The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock”. Here is my poem.
Written for dVerse Poets Prosery: Yvor’s
“Time and the Garden”. Our host, Sanaa, asks us
to write a short piece of prosery of up to 144 words
and include a complete line from the poem
“Time and the Garden”. Here is my haibun.
Written for dVerse Prosery: Walcott’s Dark August.
Our host Kim asks us to write a piece of flash fiction
of up to or exactly 144 words, including the line shown
below by Derek Walcott. Here’s where his line took me.
Written for dVerse Prosery Monday:
Prosery In the Words of Lisa Bellamy.
Our host Sanaa asks us to write a 144
word story using the quote shown at
the bottom of the page. This is my prose.
Written for d’Verse Prosery where the challenge is to write
a piece of flash fiction of no more than 144 words that includes
the following quotation from “Out Of The Cradle” by Walt Whitman:
“Out of the Ninth-month midnight”. This is my flash.
Melissa is our host for dVerse Prosery Monday. She has asked us to write a prose story of up to 144 words using the quote “I pray to God that she may lie forever with unopened eye” by Edgar Allan Poe. Here is my prose in exactly 144 words.
It was no secret that Frederick’s father committed suicide, due, in no small part, to his wife’s constant belittling. The note he left read “The vile bitch! I pray to God that she may lie forever with unopened eye”.
Not wanting his mother to be alone, and despite his wife Helene’s protests, Frederick moved his mother into their home. He hoped the two women might provide some companionship for each other but they soon began arguing.
Helene could do nothing right in her mother-in-law’s eyes. The old woman went so far as to flaunt Helene’s inability to have a baby, goading her on by calling her wretched, a desiccated vessel, a disappointing failure.
Now the pain and humiliation had taken its toll and Helene began her descent into madness. One day while Frederick was at work, she bludgeoned his mother to a bloody pulp.
NAR©2024
144 Words
This is “Song by Edgar Allan Poe”
All text, graphics and videos are copyright for The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk and The Rhythm Section and are not to be used without permission. NAR©2017-present.
Written for the dVerse Prosery Prompt by Amy Woolard:
“What does it matter that the stars we see are already dead”
“What does it matter that the stars we see are already dead? What does that even mean, Margie?”
“Oh, Nell. If I have to explain it to you, it loses its gravitas, its pathos, doesn’t it?”
“Gravitas? Pathos? I’m sorry .… when were you named chief cook, bottlewasher and poet laureate?”
Margie gave her friend a dismissive eye roll before turning her back, busying herself with little scraps of paper on her desk.
There was a time the two were like sisters, cherishing a bond they never found with anyone else. Now they barely recognized each other; their conversations were stilted to the point of being painful.
And it all came down to Nicole, a newcomer in their exclusive inner circle …. a renaissance woman and Margie thought she hung the moon.
“I miss us, Margie”
Intense silence. Spoken words were never as wounding.
NAR©2024
144 Words
This is “Sisters Of The Moon” by Fleetwood Mac
All text, graphics and videos are copyright for The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk and The Rhythm Section and is not for use by anyone without permission. NAR©2017-present.
Lisa is serving as host for today’s dVerse Prosery prompt.
We are to write a piece of up to 144 words and include the line
“But that smile was the last smile to come upon her face”.
This is my response for Lisa’s dVerse Prosery prompt.
We were living in Tennessee with my Aunt Luella and Uncle Boz after my mam and pap were killed in the South Carrollton, Kentucky train wreck of 1917. Just five days before Christmas and our family was torn apart. My mam and Aunt Luella were sisters; mam’s death nearly destroyed Auntie.
Back in January we all had such high hopes for 1917. My cousin Henry, Aunt Luella and Uncle Boz’s firstborn, was set to graduate high school in June, the first one in the family with that distinction. Aunt Luella was so proud of Henry, she couldn’t help smiling thinking of Henry’s bright future.
But that smile was the last smile to come upon her face.
Henry enlisted in the army one month before graduation. He died in the Battle of Cambrai on Thanksgiving Day.
We lost too much that year.
NAR©2024
144 Words
This is Stephen Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home” sung by Paul Robeson
This portfolio (including text, graphics and videos) is copyright for The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk and The Rhythm Section and is not for use by anyone without permission. NAR © 2017-present.
