2026 Anthology!
Call for poetry submissions:
In celebration of dVerse Poets Pub’s 15th anniversary in 2026,
we invite poets from around the globe to contribute to our upcoming anthology,
Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads.
Submission period: April 1, 2025 to June 30, 2025.
Check it out here!

To hurt is to steal
— Bono and U2, from “Mysterious Ways”
on Achtung Baby

Greetings to All Poet Pubsters on this beautiful June day. Lisa here, serving up a Prosery prompt, goodies, and liquid refreshments. Prosery is where you write a prose story instead of a poem, using a given line of poetry (or song lyric) to inspire you. Word limit is 144 words, not including title, and the given line must be used without adding or taking away any words in between. Punctuation may be changed.

Taking Björn’s lead of using a song lyric as inspiration, I immediately turned to Bono, main writer and lead singer of the Irish Band U2. Bono is a man who knows his way around a potent song lyric. From U2’s seventh studio album, Achtung Baby, per wikipedia, “it was their first album in three years and their first comprising entirely new material in over four years.”

“Mysterious Ways” is the eighth of twelve tracks. It’s not difficult to see what the other line in the paired couplet, “to touch is to heal,” means, but it is the line given today, “to hurt is to steal” that most intrigues me. I am very interested in seeing where you take it in your story.

Here’s how to take part in the Prosery Prompt:
• Write a piece of flash fiction or other prose up of up to or exactly 144 words, including the given line from the poem.
• Post your Prosery piece on your blog and link back to this post.
• Place the link to your actual post (not your blog url) on the Mister Linky page.
• Don’t forget to check the little box to accept use/privacy policy.
• Please visit other blogs and comment on their posts – reciprocation is the life of this challenge!

Top image, “Wooden Board Grass Rain,” by George Hodan