I’d petitioned with the power of a molting butterfly
to be more than just a sack of polysyllabic slick wisdoms
delivered with a staccato snap of righteous fingers. I preferred
the grieving soprano whose octaves on moonlit, bonfire nights
dampened cheeks and garnered affectionate caresses
atop my head. this is why I’ve agreed to supply a legendary
party punch: flavored, red powder, two bottles of vodka
and miniature figurines that bear striking resemblance—then
just add water. if you free them from the package, sprinkle
them alive like seasoning evenly throughout the red
liquid, are they still your people, your kin? they splash
and bang bald heads against the bowl’s Saran Wrap that keeps fresh
their pleas for me to come to my senses. but it’s too late:
partygoers welcome me with Gaye’s prurient cries
and frankincense wafting unified in the living room
air. voila, I say, snatching back plastic. the host divvies
red cups. ladled drinks all around. I’ve always reveled the taste
of my own blood: a sensitive breeding, a crisp, cloying
bouquet. a chunk of something familiar lodges in my throat
so I swallow hard, predestined for the eventual blackout
and waking to pants pissed with the allegory of it all.
Akhim Yuseff Caby is a Pushcart Prize-winning Black author whose fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, the minnesota review, Chattahoochee Review, Passages North, The Sun Magazine, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Originally from the Bronx, New York, he lives in Columbus, Ohio where he teaches writing and mathematics.
