The sentence “The arc of his piss was at least a suggestion of a path that thoughts could later take”, found on page 209 of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, in the story “People Shouldn’t Have To Be The Ones To Tell You” by Gary Lutz sticks out in a profound way. The sentence itself doesn’t seem to be that well crafted, nor does it seem to fit in with the paragraph it resides, until one looks at the use of the vowel sounds that are used within it. There seems to be an emphasis on the hard, and soft, ‘a’ sounds that make up the sentence. The sentence starts out with a soft ‘a’ in the word “arc” but then progressively crescendos into a harder and more aggressive ‘a’ throughout the sentence, until ending before a hard ‘k’ in the
