What I can say so far about using poems as prompts: I’m producing stories I feel I would never have come up with on my own. That was only rarely true when I used place and photos as inspiration. I wonder why? The day’s shorty was inspired by the poem “Minor Devastations,” by Andrzej Sosnowski and translated from the Polish by Benjamin Paloff. The poem comes from Lodgings: Selected Poems 1987-2010 (Open Letter, University of Rochester). First stanza as teaser: “Everyone is on the lookout for minor devastations / in themselves and in others. And throughout the world. / And it’s nobody’s fault. Angelic gehennas, / genes, as in genesis. Lawsonia and henna.”
Working Title: Me, in Limbo
1st Sentence: For fifty bucks he paints a watercolor of who you really are.
Favorite Sentence: No one, her entire life, had ever asked her to wear uncomfortable shoes.
Word Length: 600
Photo by Flickr user Tu Foto, January 2007.
Daily Shorty 
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