There are this many means of exerting your will on the world and only one very quiet, lush way the world wills it back in again. Under the scrub pines, I evolve: I hear every scale of rust flake from the backhoe and fall into the dirt like thunderclaps. A furious wave of cells, splitting and dividing—human, vine, rust, dirt.
Venita Blackburn, author of the short story collection Black Jesus and Other Superheroes (her 2017 debut, published as a result of her Prairie Schooner book prize for fiction) visited the UA Prose Series this September. Post-reading, Suyi Okungbowa of the Sonora Review had a chat with her. Prof. Venita Blackburn is an Assistant Professor at
Darryl Vickers isn’t hearing the frog sounds he’s listening for. He and Jansen are waist deep in a reeking swamp, recording ribbits. Frustrated, Vickers tromps around and chases the frogs. He manages to catch one of them. Jansen shines a flashlight on it.
Corey is teaching me how to shoot his father’s gun. We haven’t got bottles or cans to shoot because Corey’s dad would notice anything missing from his liquor cabinet. He keeps that locked up tighter than the guns. So we shoot the trees in the backyard.
The 45th President of the United States and I went to Baskin Robbins. I got a mint chocolate chip milkshake and the 45th President got a hot fudge sundae with chocolate ice cream. I grabbed some napkins and we sat by the window. I slurped at my shake and the 45th President shoveled his hot
