A good deal of the benefits of writing flash have to do with economy, or perhaps more accurately, efficiency. My usual writing practice is to produce a quick draft of roughly appropriate length and then using my word counter to work and rework, looking for ways to be clearer, to sharpen impact, to find stronger verbs, to chop away descriptive undergrowth without ever eliminating a single essential word or feeling. Add line and form, and this is exactly what I do when I work on a poem. Flash stories fall into several types. Each flavor may have a slightly nutritional benefit to poets.
Evocations are part lyric, part story.
They give us a moment, a place, a single emotion, a peak experience or keen insight. Sometimes I realize that it is a poem after all, but almost always I heighten the impact by playing with the form. This 202-word story is by Marin's own Molly Giles, from the collection Microfiction, edited by Jerome Stern. Many flash pieces are storylike, but bear on a single, perhaps life changing, moment for a narrator or protagonist. Prose poems' are often brief, epiphanic stories.