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Day 5- Spell It Out by Carey Shannon

Write a prose poem/story as an acrostic

StoryADay Prompt Illustration

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The Prompt

Write an Acrostic prose poem for a person, place or thing you encounter in your daily life. An acrostic is where the first letter of each line must spell out the subject of the poem. An acrostic can be beautiful or sentimental like ROSE, Regal bloom, Omen of love and beauty, Scent of heaven, Enigma of youth. Or it can be a silly take on an existing abbreviation or acronym. S.O.S. Society of Sissy’s. or UFO – Universal Freak Organization. Be as serious as you want or have fun with it!


Carey Shannon

Carey Shannon loves to use her writing to make humorous connections between items that may appear completely unrelated. A feat that is easy for a serious Elvis fan and frequent blood donor.
Carey Shannon loves to write about humorous connections between items and subjects in life that may appear to be completely unrelated. A feat that is easy for an Elvis super fan and frequent blood donor. She has been a member of the Story A Day community since 2020 and now hopes to provide some inspiration quirkiness to other writers.

Bingo!

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Join the discussion: what will you do with today’s prompt OR how did it go? Need support? Post here!

45 thoughts on “Day 5- Spell It Out by Carey Shannon”

  1. So it’s the 6th here, and I‘m really confused, because the Day 6 Prompt hasn’t been posted yet. I’m in Europe so there shouldn’t be a delay, or am I getting something wrong?

    1. I had messaged Julie about it, and she said it was scheduled for 12 p.m. (EST) instead of 12 a.m. (EST) … It’s posted now, though.

  2. Ok, it’s the 6th of May here, and I thought I was running behind and attempted acrostic prose. although not something I come across every day, this afternoon I was packing for a bush camp tomorrow night, and this little item became the candidate for my prose.

    Pooping in public or
    Or private, which would you rather
    Royalty, you are not
    Though this does not mean
    All you’re left with is the public scene

    Private pooping is all for you.
    Others will stare at you
    The envy in their eyes as you sit upon
    The throne of repute hidden within your en-suit (sic)
    Inside you’ll delight all out of sight

    Enjoy your friday.

  3. Used to have my students do it as an introduction to each other in 6th grade.
    They were ingenious and taught me so much about them.

    Thank you.

    Not sure if I will do a long word or my maiden name which is Irizarry, that would be a tough one

  4. I wrote a main one that I will probably work on more in June when the challenge is over. Also wrote three more very short ones, “Home”, “Tinker”, and “Sprite”. Tinker and Sprite are me cats. 🙂
    Thanks, Carey! This was lots of fun!

  5. Yesterday I rewrote Noah’s Ark, and today I used WATER for a related scene. Fun!

  6. This prompt was fun,

    Teaching

    Teaching can be rewarding
    Every day is different
    Attitudes arise sometimes
    Curriculum can be daunting
    Help seems so far away
    Information is endless
    Nothing is better than Summer Break
    Grades are always haunting

  7. Not sure if this qualifies as acrostic prose, but I found the exercise fun and rattled off this piece.

    Win the lottery

    When the four amigos agreed to put their cash together to increase their odds of winning the lottery, there wasn’t a statistical tickle that made the chances any better. In the time it took to pick their numbers and automate their participation, the tumblers turned a million times over. Never did they win more than $20 a go in the year since they threw $150 each into the pot. They made light of the $2 wins that came across every fortnight and agreed to throw everything back in until the big win. Hitting the right sequence though wasn’t their dream alone. Each had dreamt of the myriad ways they’d invest their winnings, but so did 10 million others scattered across the country. Luck itself was a lottery pick. One in 10 million tickets might be drawn and that person – or group, as it was in their case – would reap the benefits of enormous sudden wealth. Then, hands would be outstretched, as friends, family members and fiendish others hoped on goodwill and association to also cash in. There would be hoopla or secrecy – they hadn’t discussed how they would handle the win when – not if – it came and they would need to decide when to step forward as a group to claim and divvy the big prize. Every week the pot rose or fell depending on whether any of those playing nationally had won. Reading the results, week after week, could be depressing. You couldn’t put your heart fully into the process or it would be stomped on hard, but there was also the hope of incredible happiness that great wealth could create for them and their families and when that moment came there wouldn’t be a better group to celebrate with.

  8. Midnight tolls;
    Yes, I’m still up, pen in hand, plotting.
    Sitting when others are sleeping,
    Turning words into theft, murder, mayhem:
    Exacting revenge on the page.
    Red herrings and twists woven into this
    Yarn of
    Ne’er-do-wells and nosy sleuths ensure that
    Only the righteous escape the
    Villains and their
    Evil plans! But now it’s
    Late and sleep beckons.

  9. Not really ready for prose poetry yet, I went for a 26 sentence story, in an abecedarian format. Thanks for the prompt, it was a fun approach.

  10. My daily companion – Mountain

    M – Majestic presence
    O – on the horizon
    U – under the rising sun.
    N – Nature
    T – taking her place
    A – among all the busyness
    I – in a world filled with noise
    N – never letting me forget her presence.

  11. This was fun. Thanks for the prompt!

    Writing

    Words refuse to flow because
    Resistance is a fact of life. But then,
    Intrigued by whispering possibilities…
    Tugging at tangled threads, thoughts, themes.
    Inspired to keep fingers on keys
    Nothing stopping me but me until…
    Glorious words flow, filling the page.

  12. Here’s mine (“your” is a disembodied 2nd person, so please don’t take it personally!):

    Regarding your latest dictate:
    Other people beg to differ.
    They prefer not to
    Follow instructions to
    Laugh while rolling on the floor.

  13. I haven’t done this since I was dating my husband. (I wrote one with his name for his birthday one year) Here goes.

    Muse for millions
    Used for inspiration and expression
    Sometimes dark, other times delightful
    Inner thoughts expressed to the world
    Continuously giving of itself to others

  14. What a fun prompt! I’ve written acrostic non-rhyming poems before, and they came easy for me. But I’ve never written one that’s a story, and I decided to make it rhyme. First try, no editing!

    FAR AWAY

    Once upon a time
    Nowhere that we know
    Castles made of stone
    Everywhere we go

    Under tower kitchen
    Petty thief did roam
    Oscar was his name
    Nowhere was his home

    And in the castle with him…

    Two ladies of the realm
    In dresses bright and fair
    Met Oscar below the kitchen
    Expelled him on a dare.

    1. I missed the part where we were supposed to write about something we encounter in our everyday life.

  15. Finally started and FINISHED a prompt!

    “What value does hope have when society blames
    A woman for her grief of a life she
    Never had and gives no comfort for this
    Desolated heroine who struggles just to survive
    After so much death, destruction, and defeat.”

    Can anyone guess who this “Wanda” is?

  16. Grateful for a quick fun task today! (I bombed yesterday’s 40 minute write – couldn’t finish the story in the allotted time, but will return to it at a later date, so all is not lost.)
    Really looking forward to checking my emails to see what each day will bring. Great variety! Thank you!

  17. LOVED this exercise! Wrote one for my daughter’s baby. I am adding artistic lettering for each letter of his name and sending it to her for her first Mother’s Day. Fabulous suggestion — can’t wait to try it out in other ways. Fun and useful exercise!

  18. I am ashamed to say that I never heard of an Acrostic Poem before today. At first, I thought of skipping it. Later, I told myself, “Why don’t I give it a try? If I turn out to be the laughing stock, that won’t be the end of the world!
    So, thanks to Carey, here’s my first assay at writing an Acrostic poem. I know it looks outright cheap. But I’ll have taken a giant stride if the poem has achieved some of the features of an Acrostic poem. Any honest criticism will be appreciated.
    Here is my poem :
    Rathin was his name, not so smart a lad
    And believe you me he deserved not so bad
    ‘T was right after graduation from MAC
    He’d his first job, within a month got the sack.
    In academics, jobs, or in relationships
    No future had he, so, le belle gave him a skip.
    But what pained him most was, he believed
    He, by the fairer sex got too often ditched.
    And, being a man, he couldn’t digest it.
    Thought he,”Why? Everyone I know, every
    Tom, Dick and Harry is blessed with a lass.
    And all I seem to be doin’ is licking my a-s!
    Come on, ain’t I caring, kind and cool?”
    He at last sprinted to Ami’s, feeling hopeful.
    Amelia’s the girl after his heart, brought him
    Rotten luck! Ran into her boy who fixed him.
    Just as he feared – Amelia too had been taken.
    Ever wonder why Rathin acts so weird?
    Ends thus the saga of a man with dented pride.
    The end

      1. It’s all thanks to you, Julie. Writing on the prompts has been fun so far. By the way, do we ever get to read the stories written by the other participants? That will be fun too.
        Stay happy and blessed. Best wishes.

    1. I love acrostic puzzles but had never tried my hand at an acrostic POEM (or any other poem, for that matter — not for many years). This was a bracing exercise — not just for the process of coming up with a topic, and developing the through-line, but also for trying to get everything else on the line — after each first letter — to feel, y’know, *poetic*. Here’s my untitled effort:

      When each new day begins, merely
      Opening my phone leads first to
      Real friends and imagined mentors on The ‘gram,
      Delightful imagists all… Only after do I turn to
      Line 1 — where my mind at once clogs with
      Every five-letter option from my native tongue…

      (I’m embarrassed however not to have gone past the bare-minimum six lines; it feels like there should be something said ABOUT the subject, right?

      Thanks, Gabriele!

    2. (Whoops — completely misplaced my response to the PROMPT as a response to YOU, Gabriele… sorry for the confusion!)

  19. I don’t think I’ve ever written an acrostic poem before, except maybe at school, so this was fun and challenging for me. Completely predictably I wrote a poem about my cat, Didi.

  20. This was a quick one today. I wrote 2, one for each of the main characters, so used something they encountered daily. Baseball for Rhys and Coffee for Mel. A total of 67 words.

  21. I love today’s prompt – for me though it will be a tomorrow activity as the start of the story-a-day prompt is at the end of my day (Sydney Australia).

    Today’s story took yesterday’s prompt, the retelling of a fairy tale in forty minutes.

    This was fun, and allowed me to put a view forward that is both dark and dystopian, while all the while finding a great name for a future character.

    I hope you enjoy it https://afstoryaday.blogspot.com/2022/05/resplendent.html

  22. I rarely (i.e. never) write poetry, so this felt liberating, with the acrostic feature at least providing a guardrail. Rattled out three: Freelance, Freedom, and Stress. They’re all linked. Then I wrote about my dog and my children. Was nice to have fun

  23. Had to look up examples of these, then wrote a fun little story poem about my boss. *wicked grin*

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