Tuesday
Reading Money For Sunsets pulls your eyes open, unable to blink, until you finally finish and blink repeatedly wondering where you've gone, and what you've done in that time. Elizabeth J. Colen's prose poetry collection has the ability to make words feel new, as if she created them herself. There is no longer a distinction between poetry and prose; everything blurs into pure language, no labels. There's a particular line and image in her story "After the Fire" that best mimics her collection: "Her stomach was flat like before when I used to push the round part of my fatness into last year's tiny pants." Every story takes a shapes that has odd proportions, but with every read, unravels itself to its purest shape.Colen's best work sounds like this:
A famine. You, me. On the brink of war, a teapot set on the table's edge, spout-side out. A hovering. I watch the steam rise between us, watch the way it mutes the color of your shirt, your waving hand.
The story within Oolong recreates hunger and what it means to hunger; the reader is just as starved as the "You, Me." She creates a tension that is sickeningly unsettled and lingers past the dimensions of the page. Steam is the ultimate mediator making everything within the scene appear muted and veiled. The natural becomes even more natural.
Another striking moment occurs in her story "January Window." The "I" has a dream of being lost in the lover's hair. The reader looks through this same window seeing and feeling something the body can't recognize. Colen writes, "When you're on someone's scalp or the roads of tendrils coming from it, it's so easy to lose your bearings." Being this close takes guts. She continues, "When we got into bed, clean and leavings small circles of wet on the sheets, I mentioned the anger I had seen and we never took a shower together again." She isn't afraid of what comes next. Heartbreak mingles with danger and flirtation, and something stings long enough to dive right back into the mess of things.
Colen's stories are awesome, as in awe-inspired. Reading this collection wakes up the brain and every other organ. The inside and the outside of the body are competing for affection, and Colen knows just how to rub vulnerability raw. Now, you can finally blink.
About the Author
J. R. Bouchard, originally from upstate New York, is an alumni of Concordia University in Portland, OR, and is currently in her MFA program at Rosemont College. She mainly writes poetry but is recently very involved in flash fiction and prose. Currently, she's working on a book of poetry in her attic bedroom.
For further reading, check out FlashFiction.Net's suggested readings of flash fiction and prose poetry collections, anthologies, and craft books, by clicking here.
