March 30, 2010

From “Maxine Overdrive” by Colin Foster-Worthy

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You never appreciate your mortality so much as when you’ve been injured.

“Scale this up a little, and I’m dead.”

It’s the little wounds that make me think the most. The other day I was trying to open a stubborn container of creamer and before I knew it my knuckle was gushing blood from a scrape. A little thing like that had the power to wound me so deeply I still carry the scar of it wrapped in bandaids.

That’s what it was like with Maxine. She gave me but a little nick, but the scar stayed with me to this day—and I’ve often wondered how much more it would have taken to end me.

 

March 25, 2010

From “Tracing Davis” by Jeanette Meadows Ab-Zajj

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The note was creased and worn, as if it had been worried over for some time. Erased words were still visible beneath their replacements and sometimes a whole lineage could be traced. The first words had the smudged look of old pencil, but the last were fresh enough to rub off on one’s hands.

I want to tell my children about a day that was so bright and clean and pure that you could shout possibilities to the heavens and no one would question them. I want to tell them that I devoured that day, let its juices drip down my chin; I want to tell them that I lived that day as fiercely as if it were my very last.

What I will tell them, if indeed I tell them anything at all, is how I spent that day behind my desk, watching it blossom and fade in snatches. Through a window here, a door there, sunlight dancing its life away on tiled floors. I will tell them how I emerged only as the day was cooling and dying to embers about me.

 

March 23, 2010

From “Côte d’Ébène” by Donovan Williams

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“You don’t understand me,” Brown cried. “This city’s about to fall! She’ll be killed if she stays! I’m just trying to do my job!”

The bartender sighed. “Listen to me, Marine. Perhaps you are right; perhaps when the rebels come they will kill Ms. Anne. But perhaps not. Perhaps the rebel at the very front of the column was a schoolmate of hers. Perhaps the soldiers that burst in here know her from playing in the streets. She grew up here, and cannot believe the land would allow any harm to come.”

“But…”

“I have survived several coups, Marine. I will survive this one as well. The men are always thirsty. They are thirsty for other things as well, and if Ms. Anne wishes to wait, to see her old school friends’ faces when the men come for her, who are you to deny her? Go. Ms. Anne does not want to leave, and I will shoot you if you try and take her.”

 

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