Presents literary criticism for the book "Severance" by Robert Olen Butler, a collection of fictional first person narrative prose poems by characters who are within 90 seconds of dying. It examines use of the present tense to create an immediacy of temporal space. It notes that Butler sees fiction writing as a process of shaping time and memory. It points out that each prose poem consists of the same 240 words, compressing memories of an entire life into a short form.