Nouvelle 55: Vulnerability

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Vulnerability

The world is not delicate
on the whole. I feel it here
in my sternum, my ribs,
lying on my back under you,
stars distant, tree immense.
The world is not delicate
and the plum leaf is strong,
even when the beetle nibbles
her into lace, making room
for more stars to be
strung between her veins.

Painting: Georgia O'Keeffe's 'The Lawrence Tree,' painted on her first visit to New Mexico, when she visited D.H. Lawrence's ranch. This tree was in front of his house, with a bench under it, and she lay back on the bench to paint the tree. 

Nouvelle 55 is a flash fiction or poem in 55 words based upon a work of art.

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Nouvelle 55: Four Directions - The Star

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"Four Directions" by stained glass artist Stratoz

My friend Stratoz invited me to write a Nouvelle 55 based upon one of his stunning stained glass pieces. This poem is the result. I feel drawn to connect Stratoz' piece with art by Marc Chagall and Carl Jung (who found in mandalas representations of the Self), two people whose souls exploded in creativity, as bright and wild as Stratoz' "Four Directions." This piece is a square mandala, when most manadalas are a circle (some with a square inside). Read Stratoz' post about the healing ways of mandalas here.

The story of Israel — of Jews, of Arabs— of the great conflicts that never end, was made more poignant for me this morning when I read that the large Arab population in the Galilee region of Israel is predominantly Druze. Some believe that the Druze people descended from the Tribe of Zebulun, one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Oh that the tribes of the world could be joined as skillfully as Stratoz melds the living colors of his stained glass, and as Chagall did his stained glass, and as Jung did the colors of the unbreakable self.

The Star

prompted by Stratoz' "Four Directions"

Break the mirror.
Four-square hands
reunite in sacred sand.

Gather saturation,
arrowed imagination

east-ended by the sea
a sky-blue Galilee

in the colors of this dream.
Gate my red
leaf-paint the green

Bright my heart—
     good this art
circling the sacred soul apart.

Pull into light, my star—
Self, borne into near
and far

Lithograph, by Marc Chagall

"The Tribe of Zebulun"

from The Twelve Maquettes
Of Stained Glass Windows
For Jerusalem, 1964

found here

The Red Cross, Carl Jung's illustration from The Red Book

Nouvelle 55 is a flash fiction written in exactly 55 words, based on a piece of art. 

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Nouvelle 55: The Storm

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The Storm, by Pierre-Auguste Cot

Metropolitan Museum of Art

HE:    “What do you mean, love: ‘Hold on to me, we’re going to fly!'?"

SHE:  “I mean that if we stay, my father will banish you.
I would rather sail up together into the storm of the sky
rushing toward us now, than live out hell on earth
   —without you. The old Duke wants to marry meeee-eeee-- ~ - ~ - ~!”

*Nouvelle 55 (nouvelle cinquante-cinq - I love how it sounds in French, humor me) is a form of flash fiction, in exactly 55 words, based on a work of art.

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Nouvelle 55: The Girl by the Window

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The Girl by the Window, 1893
by Edvard Munch

Art Institute of Chicago

The Girl by the Window

Afraid, gulping bitterness,
she padded to the windowed moonlight,
to see if it were really so.

“You see? She is leaving. Look at her trunk.”
Grandmother’s voice was a triumph, like a horn.
Grandmother didn’t know her own trunk
was packed for just such a night as this.

She was afraid she would never leave.

This is my first nouvelle 55, a flash fiction.

I wonder if you're like me at the moment. My attention span is shorter than ever. I feel restless. I can barely make it through a news article or op-ed without feeling that there is something else I should be doing, thinking or saying. Living in the moment, this moment, now, has never been more difficult. Strangely though, yesterday I read longer in War & Peace than I have up until now, go figure. I had my laptop open, looking up facts about the Napoleonic Wars. I couldn't get enough. Tolstoy's beautiful writing, where I ride each sentence like I'm tubing a slow-moving river, kept me riveted for hours. It also inspired me to write fiction. Very, very short fiction.

Flash fiction, micro fiction, what the French call nouvelle. Steve Moss challenged people to write them in 55 words, no more, no less. I'm in the mood for Paris, so I made up this genre: nouvelle 55, which is flash fiction, based on a piece of art, in 55 words. This particular nouvelle 55 is a meditation on Edvard Munch's painting "The Girl by the Window." I'd love it if you'd try one. There are helpful tips for micro fiction at Heelstone here. Go ahead, find a piece of art for inspiration, and write a nouvelle 55.

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