Fiction,
EXCERPT FROM HOLDING PATTERN, FROM 'BREAD AND THE LAND': Black flutter, Mamma flashed about the room, workbound, her
shiny knee-length black leather boots working against the wood
floor like powerful pistons. Up, down, up, down. She stopped and
looked at the space around her. I have everything, she said. The
hem ends of her long black dress flared like wings. Car to car, the train pulled into the station, a flock of magnetic migratory birds. They quit the bright metal insides and, hand in hand, pushed through the rushing crowd. His snowsuited legs rubbed together and made a noise like that of an emery board against fingernails. He kept his eyes low, sighting varied shoes and boots flopping like fish across the wet concrete floor, his blind forehead colliding with belted or fitted waists. His sight lifted to bright lights perched, pigeonlike, in the high conical roof. Some fabled creature waited near the checkpoint to gate 12.
Human, beast, and fowl. Feathery white mink hat and coat, red
amphibian jumpsuit (leather? plastic?), and knee-length
alligator boots. She was tall and wide like a man, and carried a
white suitcase in one hand, a black guitar case in the other.
Graywolf Press Pan African Literary Forum
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