An Introduction from David Haynes, Board Chair of Kimbilio
When you’re the Kimbilio Board Chair, a regular part of your job is answering the question “What is Kimbilio?” After all these years, you’d think I’d have my elevator pitch on lock, but I always end up hoping the questioner ignores how much wider my eyes get as they wander back and forth—a sure sign my brain is desperately searching for a quick sound bite. (“It’s a… “We’re a…” “Uh….). Maybe they read that as excitement. Kimbilio excites me.
And to be honest, I have plenty of descriptors—too many, in fact. I can mix-and-match them at will. Here’s a small sampling of categories:
Bland Officialese: a 501c3, a not-for-profit literary organization, a community of writers and scholars (blah, blah, blah—read the rest of that on our website homepage https://kimbiliofiction.com/)
Hyperbolic Adjectives: Wonderful! Outstanding! Miraculous! Amazing! Beyond belief!
Enchanting Abstraction: an absolute joy, God-sent, a warm hug, a safe haven (redundant or not, what Kimbilio actually means over in Kenya).
In interviews, I swirl these and many other phrases into one gumbo or another, and I hope I’ve communicated something meaningful. Eventually I get around to the real answer:
Kimbilio is people. It’s our Miraculous Staff, our God-sent Faculty, our Amazing Fellows. (See what I did there?).
For now, let’s focus on those Amazing Fellows. For eleven summers we’ve had the pleasure of welcoming over 200 Fellows to Kimbilio’s annual summer retreat. And every summer each of those Fellows gifts our community with a short reading from their work. I am always impressed, always moved to tears. You should be there! I really wish you could.
But since you can’t, I’m grateful to our friends at LEON Literary Review for providing this opportunity for a small sampling of our community to give you a glance behind the curtain. It’s just a taste of what Kimbilio really is, for me, at least: A labor of love. An absolute labor of love.
David Haynes in Conversation with Karen Tucker about his new book “Martha’s Daughter”
Tara Baldridge
How I “Love” My Neighbor
This is how well I know you.
It is in my nature to search for you. And I find you – on the internet – two blocks down, three blocks east. You live with your grandmother. I know because I talk to the gray-haired lady in the cape cod five doors down and to the right of where you live…
Shinelle L. Espaillat
Not Today
Kendra stepped through the automatic glass doors into the endless lobby. She moved to the side, so as not to block the tide of people flowing into the building, and pressed a hand against the unbalanced weight of her medicine ball belly. She stared at the wide miles of carpeted hallway that led, she knew, to more carpeted hallways, to escalators and conference rooms and throngs of people talking about writing…
Leesa Fenderson
Palance
Your foot doctor looks like a late 90s George Clooney, salt and pepper hair just at his temples and a scruffy beard. You look at your feet and you’re happy you got your toenails done. You don’t think that George Clooney was ever the sexiest man alive, but you’d at least like to have your toenails done if he’s going to be examining them…
Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa
Of Mothers & Daughters
Casa Negra, that’s what los blancos call it. Milagros knows her people call it La Negra Caridad or just Caridad. She smells the place as soon as her horse turns off the main road and on to the property. The gardenias that grow in the garden cover the whole front of the house and overwhelm her as she approaches. The creamy flowers hang heavily on their stems…
Wandeka Gayle
The Silk Cotton Tree
The hem of my night dress brushed against the wet sprigs of grass and dirt as I moved. The sun would be up soon, and I wanted to reach the tree before anyone would miss me. It had rained, so the garden was soggy and glistening in the weak light. I would need to wash my nightdress myself before Blossom asked why it had flecks of mud on it, I thought, stepping around puddles barefoot. …
Mary McLaughlin Slechta
A Summer Cold
Leavener noticed things. At five, on the hottest day of a hot summer, he noticed the bees. Normally buzzing the flowerbeds, they covered the sidewalk. Not stuck and melting, like worms on a hot day, these were perfect, whole, and motionless against the bleached concrete. He counted twenty.
Inside his grandmother’s house, where he and his mother lived, the closed curtains rippled at a regular pattern. He counted the pattern out in his head….
Denise Laidler
Digging Two Graves
The taxi driver surveyed the tense faces of the crowd spilling from the sidewalk and staring down Washington Boulevard, slapped his hand against the outside of the taxi door and called out to no one in particular.
“Eyyii! Wha’ de man dem a gwaan wid up the road?”
“Traffic jam. Bashment party just over while funeral procession a pass through.” A boy in khaki pants chewing the end of a hibiscus stalk shouted an answer….
Jason Harris
Komba
Steam is rising off the shores of Limbe as the surf rushes forward. The beach is in an uproar, which is a surprise to me, because I was told it isn’t tourist season. The early morning fishermen are yelling and pointing at the weird constellation that has partially consumed the normally tranquil, black volcanic sands. The pulsing and writhing constellation are some type of blue orbs the size of marbles, piled knee deep for at least 30-40 metres. I drift towards the mass of people and fish and the din grows…
Victoria Palmer
15 D
The knock struck sharp and impatient. Two quick raps. Like a cop with a warrant or an irritated delivery driver running late. Martha had been halfway through folding caramelized onions into a pot of rice and stewed peas. The building was quiet most days, except for the occasional hum of the elevator…
Camille F. Forbes
Uncle Morris’s Body
I woke with a start, clutching Uncle Morris’s body like to protect it. I hadn’t been outside since the whitemen dragged me into the cave. The cool air blowing in and the blackness at the opening told me that we were in the depths of night…
Debra Stone
Betty in Trouble
Betty wanted a house with no mice. She was embarrassed when the mice chewed the corner of the book cover from the Rondo library and she had to explain to Miss Gleason that they had mice in the house. In many ways, Betty learned to live with embarrassing situations. The book had been her favorite too. It was her first colored poetry book by this author from Chicago, Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters…
N. Jamiyla Chisholm
Shotgun — Jr. Walker & The All-Stars (1965)
Damn her, Cane thought. Georgia Jamaica had been his faith for nearly a decade nonstop, his crescent moon and stars. Much like the art of boxing, she destroyed him every time he saw her, only to rebuild him, layer-by-layer.
“Damn her,” he said. He sat in his red-brick Chevy with the vegetable-dyed interior still smelling new and looked at himself through the rearview mirror…