Nothing to Report From Africa
The child who died last night when the rain came to fill her mouth with mud and needles whispered your name. Yes. I heard her. Your name: the last kiss of her splintered lips, the final roll of her tongue swelled indigo.
She doesn’t even speak your language, yet the idea of you were with her at the end when the skulking-skinny pye dogs rose up off their hinds and lowered their gaze and wanted above all else the poor meal of her. Imagine that! Your name spilling the precise moment as dog saliva.
Don’t misunderstand: I love you.
Her brown eyes blued like skim milk. One rolled away from the other. A wasp trod the sclera and sank its eggs. When I pinched it off, the fore wings tore from the thorax. I put the wings in the girl’s ear, the pedaling body in her mouth. She spoke.
She whispered your name and reached for you. Yes. I saw her. Her brown fist a chestnut roasted open. I stuck my finger inside. Something bled. I think it was you.
Debra Di Blasi (www.debradiblasi.com) is founding publisher of Jaded Ibis Press and president of Jaded Ibis Productions. In addition to her publishing role, she is a multi-genre writer and artist whose books include The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions; Drought & Say What You Like; Prayers of an Accidental Nature; What the Body Requires, and Skin of the Sun (forthcoming). Awards include a James C. McCormick Fellowship in Fiction from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, Thorpe Menn Book Award, Cinovation Screenwriting Award, and Diagram Innovative Fiction Award. She teaching and lectures on 21st Century narrative forms.
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