Five Points, Vol. 7 No. 2
Fall 2003From Janet Burroway, “I am interested in the idea that every novelist only has one story to tell and tells it over and over.”
Sample Content
Elizabeth Spires
Photo of You Disappearing
In January, five years ago, you stood for a moment,
solitary in the snow, as a friend snapped a photo.
In faded jeans and windbreaker, you let the camera
freeze you forever on top of a mountain in Nevada.
You had gotten the news a month before, a clouded X-ray,
then a scan, and now behind you (or ahead?) a range
of snow-covered mountains, pine trees pointing up toward
frail wisps of cloud, they sky blue-cobalt bleeding into black.
Are ends like beginnings? At your service, the minister
said, She fixed her eyes upon that shining shore.
If I climbed the mountain, would I find the trail you took?
Would your footsteps lead me to a pass that opens west,
always west, where you went on alone, no turning back?
I stare at the picture that tells me everything and nothing.
You are smiling. The air is perfectly clear.