“Mourning,” by Jamesie Pitseolak

Hello to All on dVerse Prosery Monday! Lisa here as your pub host and provider of liquid refreshment and tasty snacks from the magic cupboard along with today’s poetry prompt.

Before we get into the challenge, a reminder: Please mark your calendars now for this Thursday, December 9, at 3pm EST, as it is OLN Live! where Bjorn will be our host. OLN Live is a fun time of camaraderie where we can read our poems and interact with other pubsters and hear them read their poems.  This Thursday will be our last LIVE OLN for 2021 because we are going on holiday break for the last 2 weeks of December.

One of the big news stories for 2021 has been the discovery in both the United States and Canada of graveyards with the remains of students forcibly confined at “Indian boarding schools.” I’m the first to admit I’ve been too caught up in my own gut reaction to the horror of it to have energy to extend out to the family members of the children whose remains were discarded into unmarked graves and/or to those children who survived the schools to carry the horror of it with them. In honor of the found and lost, I went searching for North American Indigenous poets in order to find a line for today for us to write prosery around.

The Google Gods were kind as they led me to a February 13, 2018 issue of Literary Hub, titled, “New Poetry by Indigenous Women: Introducing a Series Curated by Natalie Diaz,” that introduces four poets and includes poetry selections by them. Each poem resonated with sentiments that feel both timeless and timely. It was difficult choosing one line from one poet in this grouping. I settled on one from Kimberly Blaeser. Please read more about Ms. Blaeser here.

The line I chose is from her poem, “When We Sing of Might,” where you can read the entire poem at the Literary Hub link.

I dress in their stories patterned and purple as night.

Most interestingly as I went to categorize and tag this post, I see I used one of Kimberly’s poems in an August prompt as well. This is serendipity of the best kind.

Photo of Kimberly Blaeser from University of Wisconsin

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to incorporate the above quote into a piece of prose. This can be either flash fiction, non-fiction, or creative non-fiction, but it must be prose! Not prose poetry, and not a poem. And it must be no longer than 144 words, not including the title. (It does not have to be exactly 144 words, but it can’t exceed 144 words.)

•Please include Kimberly Blaeser and the name of the poem it came from on your post
•You must use that entire line. You may change punctuation and capitalize words, but you are not allowed to insert words in between parts of the sentence.
•Write a piece of flash fiction or other prose of up to or exactly 144 words, including the given line.
•Post your Prosery piece on your blog and link back to this post.
•Place the link to your actual post (not your blog or web site) in the Mister Linky site.
•Don’t forget to check the little box to accept use/privacy policy
•Please try to visit other blogs and comment on their posts.  It’s part of what makes dVerse a community!