Five Points, Vol. 17 No. 3
Fall 2016From Stuart Dybek: "I thought of the short prose form whether it was called a prose poem or a vignette or whatever (the term flash was yet to be coined) as a little laboratory for messing around with prose rhythm."
Sample Content
Dawn Raffel
Ask Us, Please
Out at the lighthouse, breakers rose and broke over concrete that shouldn’t have been there—ask us, please.
“It used to be natural rock,” she said. She knew that I knew it.
Nights we’d jumped, in love with no trespass. Jagged in water. The rush to the lookout was grievous for mothers and casual drunks.
Look at us: too old to be orphans. Which we were, nonetheless. Ragged-eyed.
They’d covered it over. The color was oyster or possibly bone. It was all about slippage and civic convenience.
“Awful, this,” she said to me.
Up the hill a mile north, the bulk of our lovers were buried in dirt. Spray hit the surface. Her face, in light, faded. Our sneakers were mottled.
“Which do you miss the most?” I said.
“Of what?” she said.
“My shoes are a disgrace,” I said.
“They’ll dry,” she said. “The falling, I think. The possibility of it.”
“You’re right,” I said. I took her arm. “I miss being caught.”