Search All Winners

Prancing down the building’s stairs, Hui concentrated again on the boy who had stopped returning her calls. Acknowledging another’s pain obscured one’s own. Hui wasn’t ready yet to accept that. From the window, Meng watched her granddaughter walk up the tree-lined street. The old woman’s longing was like that of a child, featuring prominently in her eyes, which captured that spirit from her youth. It would have been easy for anyone to picture what she had looked like back then, if anyone had been there.

Rachel comes to the porch holding herself and asking for

my uncle. We say he gone to the store but he’s years dead.

She keeps holding on to herself like her body remembers

what her mind lost. When he get back, tell him he owe me $5.

We offer to pay. She says, No. Tell him.

He sent this key from Florida.

I think. A key to what?

I tried the car, the trucks,

tried every door – nothing fit.

My wife thought it was his idea

of a joke. I never got his jokes.

Not a word from him, just things:

a blank postcard from Colorado Springs;

a snapshot of himself from Aspen,

arm in arm with somebody, but

both faces had been scissored out.

A sign above the bar said SHIT HAPPENS.

Eugene, Spokane… He’s telephone,

collect, and I knew it was him,

though he always used a different name.

At times enough to make you laugh:

Call from Hans, Ricardo, Jeff,

will you accept? Yes. Dial tone.

A prophet is never recognized in his own country, especially when that country has fallen into the mouths of dragons. Bob waves to a woman in a BMW across the street. It’s his lawyer, Christine. “Is me, Bob!” She closes the tinted windows and weaves through traffic. There was a time when BMW stood for Bob Marley and the Wailers. He thinks of the foolishness of that now.

            He returns to the park, searching for the boy from the night before. He wants to shine his shoes again, to see the light in his eyes from Africa reflected there. In the daylight, the park is different from how he remembered it, but the boy’s tree still leans, and there’s a man selling peanuts and asham.

            “You see the little youth that sleep inna the park?"

            "Which one?"

            “The one with the play-play guitar."

            “Oh, me remember him. Him in juvenile detention! Is a bad youth.”

            “No. Me see him last night.”

            “Him kill a Chinie man in August town. Man-slaughter."

            It doesn’t make sense. Bob has a feeling that he has stepped into the middle of someone’s dream. The fall-down skin itches and there is a dull pain behind his eyes. An idea comes to him.

            “You know Bob Marley?”

            “Yeah?”

            “What if me tell you him come back?”

Six months ago, before all this, I drove into Las Vegas on a hot August twilight. My first time in the city. From the highway, I could see the Strip in the far distance, but also a lone dark cloud above it, flushed on a bed of light, glowing alien and purplish in the sky. My tired, pulpy brain at the time, I thought it was a UFO or something and nearly hit the truck ahead of me. Fifteen minutes later, at a gas station, I was told about the beam of light from atop that pyramid casino and how you can even see the beam from space, given no clouds were in the way. My disappointment surprised me.