Andrew Kozma is a writer of short stories, novels, and plays. He wrote this piece, Under God’s Gaze, for a collaborative project we did in 2013.
Each performance lasted ten minutes, and ended with an explosion.
The faces of the audience were ecstatic. With every whizz-bang, mouths jerked into smiles, and the smiles opened up into gasps rimmed with bright teeth.
The faces of the performers, on the other hand, were cicada shells. They were beautiful, spotless plates, the good china that was never used but kept, instead, in the china cabinet and used only when the right people came along. Which was never. Their faces were frosted glass waiting for their moment to shine in the sun.
And they had more time to shine than ever, as the sun was growing larger. It was a big, angry ball in the sky. It was a drunkard’s red-bruised eye.
The performers performed under that great stare, naked to the light. They fired their voices into the sky. They told their jokes to the air. They danced – how they danced! – hobbled by gravity. Their skin reddened the moment they touched the stage, and by the time their allotted fame was up, they were red as beets. And nobody likes beets.
But the crowd ate it up. They opened their peach-pit eyes and cleared their sewer-drain ears. They oohed and they aahed, and they screamed and they cheered, and when the performer went up in smoke, they demanded that the next appear.
It was the end of the world, after all, and if the sun refused to be satisfied with any sacrifice, at least humanity could die laughing or moved to tears. Most of them, anyway.
The performers in the wings, their faces were full of fear.
Technicians affixed explosives to their vests and patted their backs.
Andrew has been published in a slew of journals and magazines (including Blackbird, Kenyon Review, JuxtaProse, Zone 3, Painted Bride, Redactions and many others) and is a six-time Pushcart nominee. His poem “Ode to the Common Housefly” appears in Best American Poetry 2015.
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