Five Points, Vol. 19, no. 3
Winter 2019"I would say that writing gives me the greatest pleasure of anything in life, that writing is what is fulfilling for me; there is nothing else in life like it when it is happening, and that when it is happening it is just a matter of stepping aside."
—William Gay
Sample Content
Sharon Dolin
My Life in a Coffee Cup
What I poured in
I drank—and what I drank
I became. My tongue led me
to taste the entrance to things—
my lips, split apart, in pursuit—
my eyes strayed to other eyes
when the cup overturned—
my nose drank in
the escaping mist—my ears
on their own foraged
save for instants of sip
& pour. First, letters fell
into the cup—then, words
canalized the mud
as I stirred in the milk
drinking it up, whole
phrases tumbled in:
it took many strokes
to hook and pull them out
clean onto the page—
white like the roughest sea—
as the words spilled out
the cup emptied until
night’s ink scavenged
the dark and refilled the cup
when I poured
and once more
drank down the world.