Daily Prompt Love <3 Even–Especially–When It's Hard
23 May 2017
Make art about seeing the world through eyes of Love, especially when it seems most impossible.
Archive for the ‘Bless the Day’ Category
Daily Prompt <3 That Beautiful Yawp
22 May 2017
Thanks and Love to that fabulous poet-sister Amy Tudor for posting the article that inspires today’s prompt.
“Adults in America don’t sing communally. Children routinely sing together in their schools and activities, and even infants have sing-alongs galore to attend. But past the age of majority, at grown-up commemorations, celebrations, and gatherings, this most essential human yawp of feeling—of marking, with a grace note, that we are together in this place at this time—usually goes missing.”
How Communal Singing Disappeared From American Life: And Why We Should Bring It Back
Make art about singing with others, about that joining of voices.
Very Special Call for Submissions Love <3 FutureCycle Press and Good Works Review
The wonderful Robert S. King and Diane Kistner at FutureCycle Press are launching a new journal: Good Works Review, now open for submissions.
From the website:
“Submissions to our first issue are now open (see guidelines) for poetry, short fiction, literary essays, and black-and-white artwork. We will not publish online but in an annual printed issue along with a Kindle e-book version, usually in December of each year.
Like Kentucky Review, this new publication is part of FutureCycle Press’s Good Works Projects. All proceeds from sales of GWR are donated to the ACLU.
Website: http://goodworksreview.futurecycle.org/
Guidelines: https://futurecycleflash.submittable.com/submit
Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Attempting Peace in the Tumult
20 May 2017
Sewing without a pattern, a night gown I’ve wanted to attempt for months, but kept scaring myself out of trying.
Make art about attempting something you’ve been scared to try.
21 May 2017
Make art about making moments of peace among the tumult.
Friday Call for Submissions Love <3 Blood Tree: Inaugural Issue
Blood Tree
“Blood Tree Literature is an up-and-coming online literary journal based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We are currently looking for lyrical and resonant works of flash fiction/nonfiction, prose, experimental, and hybrids that push the boundaries of convention and genre. We welcome both published and emerging writers.
Additionally, we are so excited to announce that we are welcoming visual artists to submit art forms including but not limited to: video essays & short films, photo series, fine art collections, graphic design, and each and every variant of these medias. Artwork will be accompanied by a biography and a link (if applicable) to the artist’s website. This is a great opportunity for those who are looking to both promote their art through a different medium and draw attention to personal portfolios.
Please send submissions to bloodtreelitATyahooDOTcom to be considered for publication. All submissions must be submitted in a single Microsoft Word or PDF document with page numbers. Please include a cover page stating your name, a brief bio, and your contact information.
The launch of Blood Tree is due this summer. Submissions are rolling.
Website: https://www.bloodtreeliterature.com/
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/bloodtreelit/about/
Editor at Blood Tree
Daily Prompt Love <3 Another Chance: A Very Special Birthday Prompt
19 May 2017
Seven years ago today, my oldest son J was in a terrible car accident, his little plastic Saturn sedan t-boned by a brand new Dodge Charger with its all-steel construction.
J, my laughing, charismatic, kind, smart son, only 22 then, was critically injured, with a compression skull fracture, subdural hematoma, subarachnoid hemorrhaging, and four feather bleeds into his beautiful brain. They airlifted him by helicopter from our small town to the major medical facility, MCV, in Richmond, admitting him directly into the neurological ICU. He was conscious the whole time, talking, joking, charming the nurses, complaining that he couldn’t look out the window on his first-ever helicopter ride, even saying things meant to reassure me, his sister, his brother, the friends who stood by us at the hospital. We bedded down in the ICU waiting room, while behind those heavy doors, monitors clicked and hummed, documenting my son’s traumatic brain injury. That was Wednesday.
Early Thursday afternoon, as I stood as J’s bedside, a doctor we hadn’t seen before strode in, his crisp white lab coat flowing behind him. He introduced himself as the head of neurological research, and after a moment, he asked us if we had seen J’s latest CT scan. We hadn’t, so he hurried from the room, telling us he’d be right back. J and I looked at each other, confused, and my son must have seen worry in my eyes, as he patted my hand.
The doctor returned, wheeling in a large piece of equipment, a medical imaging viewer, and positioned it at the end of J’s ICU bed. He turned it on and the image of my son’s skull appeared, stark in the black and whiteness of it all. For a second, we were completely silent. Then the doctor, smiling, began to explain what we were seeing.
What we were seeing was nothing: no bleeding, no bruising, no swelling. The only sign that remained of my son’s injury just 24 hours before was the spiderweb of fractures in the bone, as if a pencil eraser had been pushed into the fragile shell of an egg, a network of bone break just beneath the C-shaped wound on the side of his head. J’s brain looked completely normal, showing not a single other sign of the blow he’d taken the day before in the wreck that had left his little car mangled, left nothing but the driver’s seat intact.
The doctor grinned, saying, “We want to study you, study why and how you healed so quickly.”
That was Thursday. We brought J home midday on Friday. Six weeks later, he was back at work, then back to his last year of college that fall. We talked time and again about his miraculous healing, about why it might have happened.
J, my wise son, said, “Mom, I don’t know why it happened. I just know I got another chance.”
He now calls May 19 his birthday. His Facebook status this morning read, “Today, I am alive.”
Make art about being given another chance.
Daily Prompt Love Catch-Up <3 Small Lights
17 May 2017
I hate grocery shopping. But today while grudging my way through it, I ran into a retired colleague whom I adore and haven’t seen in a while. He made me laugh, like always. And I laughed through the rest of the shopping.
Make art about something good arising from something you usually dread.
18 May 2017
Dreamt I was lighting candles, thousands and thousands of candles, as far as I could see.
Make art about the power small lights.
Some Call for Submissions Love <3 The Broke Bohemian
The Broke Bohemian Summer Edition 2017
Deadline: June 14, 2017
The Broke Bohemian is now accepting submissions for the Summer 2017 Edition! We publish pieces at the forefront of unconventional thought and outlandish perspectives. Get wild. Wear your activism proudly. Bare your teeth. Rise up, and rave in the name of Beauty. We commit ourselves to fostering the voices of all people, especially those who’ve been disenfranchised and unheard among the ever-booming holler of the bourgeoisie! Come join the Bohemians!
Guidelines: https://www.brokebohemian.com/submit/
Daily Prompt Love <3 Progress
16 May 2017
No one’s perfect.
Make art about progress versus perfection, about the myth of perfection, about the lessons and the beauty of being flawed.
Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Sun, Rain, and Small Beauties <3
8 May 2017
End of the semester, so I’ve been drowning in final grading.
Make art about feeling overwhelmed.
9 May 2017
Had some morning company 🙂
Make art about chickens in the road.
10 May 2017
So much rain here lately. Making the local weathermen happy, with their maps and pointers. 🙂
Make art about a weather map.
11 May 2017
My son’s sweetie got a new kitten, Baloo 🙂 Between him and my GrandPerson, our lives are filled with glorious baby things.
Make art about small beauties.
12 May 2017
Hung my sheets out to dry. Love climbing into them after they’ve come in that same day from the line.
Make art about the smell of the sun.
13 May 2017
Today was my daddy’s birthday. He could find the funny in everything, and he loved my mama more than breath. He wrote us letters to tell us kids all the things he loved about our mama.
Make art about how much you love someone.
14 May 2017
Another Mother’s Day, and I can’t help but think of all the women who mother in ways other than the traditionally expected.
Make art about nontraditional nurturing.
15 May 2017
Reading Whitman before bed last night. For Whitman, not only was poetry a kind of democratic action, but democratic action should itself be understood as a kind of poetry.
Make art about democratic action as poetry.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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