Bruce Alford received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and was an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama from 2007-2011. He currently lives in Hammond, Louisiana. Before working in academia, he was an inner-city missionary and journalist. You can find out more about Bruce and his work at his website, bruce-alford.com, connect with him on Facebook and on Twitter @bruceealford.
Negative Capability
The slant of a dot moves up and down, like someone descending stairs. The boy blinks, and waves of heat move around his hand, and his mother steps in the doorway, smiling, and holds a long knife near his head.
Al Jolson sings on the radio.
Everything is lovely … when you start to roam.
It always makes him imagine walking among some slim trees or lifting a stone. For a while his problems vanish. And he shuts his eyes and tries to see
With his fingers on his eyelids, he feels those balls inside their sockets, moving side to side. Disturbing little tears come out of the cracks of his eyes.
Look, he stands at the house, and sparrows trace its spine in deep concentration. He marks the riddle of their flight. He tightens his lips, and you can see his skull under turgid veins today and the letter M at his temple.
Bewildered, nauseous and withered, he cannot eat
Forks abandon his fingers. So, he sits next to the house and writes in dirt. At the finger’s tip, cursive blends into earth. God gives him this faith, god gives him this gift. It has no meaning
Silent and miraculous. Everything he believed, he always believes, but now, he gets glimpses of time without end. Make sense or don’t, he tells himself.
Act as though you believe in miracles, mythologies these enchantments in your tea, the many ways of being, with little conviction or sense, or with great meaning, based on your freedom to decide
To make sense or not
At last, a dot appears at the end of the road. And the dot moves up and down, like someone ascending stairs, and the dot unfolds until it turns into a figure of a man.
Somebody is coming. But who can tell.