Magic at the Core
Zoë Johnson deftly explores matters of love, identity, and self expression in their evocative story ‘Inherited Love of Unexplainable Things’. We are delighted to share with you this winner of the editors’ choice honourable mention in the 2019 Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest, appearing in Issue 23, Summer 2019.
And, for a chance to have your work appear in the magazine and on the website, see the details below for the 2021 Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest.
Inherited Love of Unexplainable Things
by Zoë Johnson
Detroit — 1977
When you were little, your daddy was always telling you that the most precious things in this world were the things you couldn’t explain.
Mysteries, he would say, are what make life worth living. The things that don’t follow rules, that defy common sense — things with magic at the core of them. Things like Black folk’s hair and the grace of God. Things like you and your sister and your mama.
He would always say the last one with that sly wide grin of his, and your mama would always smack his arm but you could always tell she was smiling.
Your daddy is the one who teaches you to look for the small and miraculous things and after a while, you feel you’ve gotten pretty good at noticing them.
The way Miss Minnie bakes pies in the church basement and you can smell them all the way through service. The way Imani, without fail, arrives at school every Monday with a brand-new rhyme to jump rope to. The way lines of skin appear when a girl does her hair up in cornrows — like some secret language of Black beauty written out before you.
Maybe it was your daddy’s influence, or maybe your inherited love of unexplainable things, or maybe it’s just a mystery in and of itself that you become addicted to the way it makes you feel when a pretty girl lays eyes on you.
To find out what happens next, pick up your copy of Issue 23, Summer 2019 here!
The 2021 Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest
Craft some flash and take a chance at the $300 top prize and publication in Issue 31, Summer 2021. Opening 1 January, the Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest is for stories short and sweet (or savoury!). Send us your flash (750 words or less, please) by 15 February and your story might just be named queen of the hive!
And, for some short-fiction tips on technique, read what Bumblebee judge (and flash master) Bob Thurber has to say about the anatomy of microfiction and resources for getting started.
Zoë Johnson is an emerging queer transgender writer living in the mid-Michigan area. They are Anishinaabe, of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Currently they are a graduate student in the creative writing MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Work of theirs has been published by the Sonora Review Online and is available in the second edition of Trans Bodies, Trans Selves from Oxford University Press.
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