Five Points, Vol. 19, no. 2

Summer 2019

"I’ve always kept one foot out of the academy. This has always been a conscious act on my part. Physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. I refuse to let the academy have me in any kind of whole way."
—Nikky Finney

Sample Content

Jenny Xie
from Visual Orders

[1]

Harvest the eyes from the ocular cavities.
Complete in themselves:
a pair of globes with their own meridians.

[2]

What atrophies without the ending of a gaze?
The visible object is constituted by sight. 
But where to spend one's sight, a soft 
currency? To be profligate in taking in
the outer world is to shortchange the 
interior one. Though this assumes
a clean separation, a zero-sum game.

[3]

To draw ink-lines across the lids
To dip into small pots of pigment
To brush two dozen times
To flush with water and tame with oil
To restrain and to spill in appropriate measure
To drink from the soft and silvery pane
To extract the root of the solitary so as to appear

[4]

Describe how the interior looks.
Cloak the eyes.
Close them, and seeing continues.

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