She forgets
the number of children she had and that she outlived them all
what pockets are for
where masturbation is appropriate
how to blink with both eyes
how hard to scratch an itch
her parents
whole nations
how the dense pain of childbirth leaves the mind immediately, forever.
She forgets
the nature of ordinary people
that faces of strangers should not be surprising the way sea urchins or a horse suddenly urinating can be surprising
what an itch is
wars
the lovely indescribable smell of clean women
space
the ocean
Jim Crow laws
how to avoid the cold: liquor
her childhood on a tobacco farm with parents who could only afford free labor: her brothers and sisters
lighting fires between the tobacco rows to prevent frost
how to pluck her eyebrows into a fine arch
accidentally setting fire to the tobacco farm
her mother’s tears in the moonlight as the fields burned and the beautiful smell afterwards
that she’d been in love just once and pretended twice.
She forgets
her favorite nephew, a colorblind old man who liked all the same songs she did and sold pills without a prescription
Star Trek
two of her sons ate Vienna sausages until their hearts gave out in consecutive years
only one of her children died happy
running away during the fire and losing two toes to frostbite
three of her daughters loved men who were no good
the weight of men who know they’ve been lied to
dinosaurs
Canada and Ecuador
what it means to use a toilet
how to get out of bed or write a to-do list
how to smile to a kind face
day comes before night and babies before menopause
her own name
solar panels
cattle prods
ginger beer
blood on her tongue from an overzealous fuck
fear of death
the Los Angeles Riots
Anchorage
honor killings
Tupac and Biggie
black coffee with chocolate cake in the mornings
Christmas stockings
thrift-store shopping out of necessity.
She forgets
how to swallow
her first dog and father died of kidney failure
her son-in-law with Epstein-Barr once mugged a pizza man
the absent toes make her limp like a wounded soldier
the smoky smell of familiar ghosts
there were people who loved her, who knew her in many hours with many faces on days
that have no record.
Works by Venita Blackburn have appeared or are forthcoming in the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books (print), American Short Fiction, The Georgia Review, Pleiades, Madison Review, Bat City Review, Nashville Review, Smoke Long Quarterly, Café Irreal, Santa Monica Review, Faultline, Devil’s Lake Review, Nat.Brut., Bellevue Literary Review, audio download through Bound Off, and others. She was awarded a Bread Loaf Fellowship in 2014 and the Prairie Schooner book prize for fiction, which resulted in the publication of her collected stories, Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, in 2017. She has received several Pushcart prize nominations, and in 2018 she earned a place as a finalist for the PEN/Bingham award for debut fiction, and the NYPL Young Lions award. She is also a recipient of the PEN America Los Angeles literary prize in fiction. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at California State University, Fresno.
