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
Karen Donovan
A lustrous, pearly interior
Finally, the worst thing that can happen. Language turns hermetic and begins to vanish. Great heraldic sentences unfurl out of the world at me, and I feel no need to take them down. Once I had looked at things with longing to extract meaning and fix it with words. Now I sit on the shell beach, sifting handfuls, with no desire to say anything. Anything is going to be extra. Grackles pick the tideline. When a lady in a sky blue sweater vest walks her two Scotties down to the water so they can bury their noses in seaweed, I see then all the code that is written inside things and know in my heart that words are nothing.