Five Ways of Looking at a Stabbing
- Five Ways of Looking at a Stabbing
1.
There was a white male and in the beginning he bought snacks and in the end he died and the investigation is pending and we promise we will find who is responsible let us assure you.
2.
My knife flashed flat in the Los Felis sun which was like the spark of his life being extinguished deep in something dark and bloodtight and fundamentally confused.
3.
As he saw his skin slough off from his interlacing wounds he remarked how supple it seemed, how vibrant with elastin. I am so young, he thought, and I should not let this skin pass from my life unremarked.
4.
No, he's been stabbed. His eyes were rolling back in his head and so Karen thought it was a drug overdose. He was still holding on to his coke and chips while he convulsed. I said Karen look at that cat I have never seen a cat stare at anything so intently before.
5.
The blood was, and the sun was eight minutes ago, and we know this from our eyes and the bitter heat in our mouths, and the flies are and the cat is and the man is; but when now's sun lands on him and folds over his face he will not be. [End Page 184]
Forester McClatchey is a poet and painter from Atlanta, Georgia. Having worked as a journalist, a cartoonist, and a factory hand, he is now an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Florida. His work appears in Bayou Magazine, THEMA, and Ricochet Review.
