GARDEN OF THE GODS
BY AMA CODJOE
The playbill is shut and I’m thinking
of the book Octavia Butler never wrote:
how it could begin with the death
of the last black man in the whole entire
world, which is the name of the play
we are about to see: “The Death of the Last
Black Man in the Whole Entire World
A.K.A. The Negro Book of the Dead.”
My date and I share the armrest
and I’m staring at the black wisps
on his forearm picturing the hair no one
else can see: symmetrical except the patch
on his lower back. We stand to let three patrons
pass, press ourselves against the backs
of our seats. Sometimes when I kiss the man
beside me, I think of one of Butler’s
protagonists who had the ability
to feel another’s pleasure. I want to feel
what my lips taste like and how his it feels
good really feels. These days, real life
feels like science fiction and science fiction
can be truer than life—or at least
true to life, which is what this novel
would be: more real than local news,
a depiction (spoiler alert) of the fictions
of race and their real consequences.
And—there’d be a plot twist in the first
few pages: with his dying breath
the last black man in the whole entire world
would, like a god, animate a new one.
If Octavia Butler was alive to write it,
the rest of the novel would, in its entirety,
be about that. Mud oozing. The first forms
of life. The lights are dimming
and I see clearly what’s beginning
to move. A large branch stretched
across most of the stage and a woman,
head-wrapped, gripping a watermelon
in her lap. Uncrossing and recrossing
my legs, I take one last look
at the arm beside me, dark and alive,
before another world pulls us away.
