Darwin Redux

Things have gotten bad by the end and so Manuela and I get on my motorcycle and ride through the wreckage of our city southward toward Florida because we think — or maybe it’s not thinking, but something more like instinct — that at least there will be ships washed up on the shore with all their provisions for the taking and that maybe we can find a boat that will still float and can set out to sea, that even if we find no other land to call home at least we’ll be on the ocean, the giver of life, that we might even discover a way to live beneath it, swimming green through its murk, opening our mouths and taking oxygen out of the water just as our ancestors did.

John Talbird is the author of novel The World Out There (Madville) and the chapbook of stories A Modicum of Mankind (Norte Maar). His fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Potomac Review, Ambit, Juked, Riddle, Fence, and The Literary Review, among many others. He is a frequent contributor to Film International, on the editorial board of Green Hills Literary Lantern and Associate Editor, Fiction, for the online noir journal Retreats from Oblivion. A professor at Queensborough Community College-CUNY, he lives with his wife and son in Queens, NY. More of his writing can be found at johntalbird.com.