Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors compare their recently released books to weird things. This week Kim Magowan writes about The Last Day, her new story collection out from Moon City Press.
If The Last Day were a poison, it would be extracted from a little-known purple flower, found on mountain tops. Harvest, dry upside-down, and crush the stamens, via mortar and pestle, into a fine, bluish powder. Then store the powder (the size of a q-tip head will do the trick) inside a hollow amethyst ring, for convenient use.
If The Last Day were a pantry item, she would be pine nuts, $18 for a small plastic container, that you keep buying so you can made homemade pesto, but your husband keeps eating by the handful (doesn’t he know they cost $18 for a mere 1 ¼ cup?!? You need a better hiding place).
If The Last Day were a dahlia, she would be a Pompom.
If The Last Day were an encounter with wildlife, she would be a creature not dangerous in a life-threatening way, but still alarming, in the sense of threatening real unpleasantness: either a skunk or a young porcupine. You would encounter The Last Day, make nervous eye contact with its bright, low-to-the-ground eyes, and back slowly away.
If The Last Day were a condiment, she would be whole grain mustard.
If The Last Day were an organ, she would be skin: the largest organ in the body, but so thinly stretched.
If The Last Day were a plant, she would be a prickly pear, encountered first by your toddler sitting in her stroller, this toddler who is always picking random crap off the ground, who after thirty seconds will say “Ow ow ow,” and then hand this ominous, strange object to you, and after thirty seconds your own hand will be on fire and you yourself will say “Ow ow ow,” and you will hurry home and take a bath together, during which you tweeze fine needles, like filaments made of glass, from both your child’s and your own stinging hands, and for months afterwards, whenever you stroll through that stretch of path, your toddler will shriek “Don’t touch! Don’t touch!”
If The Last Day were a pair of eyes, they would be heterochromatic.
If The Last Day were a fictional character, she would be Frederick the Mouse, storing intangible resources (colors, poems, memories) while all the fellow mice run around collecting seeds and complain that Frederick is being lazy.
If The Last Day were a hair style, the length would vary from chin to waist, but she would always have bangs.
If The Last Day were a dream, you would wake feeling anxious. You would wonder if the dream was a warning, you would wonder whether you should cancel a flirting-with-disaster plan, you would furthermore wonder if you might (after all) be psychic.
If The Last Day were a Yogi Berra aphorism, it would be “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” (The Last Day loves contradictions and hates committing herself).
If The Last Day were a confession, it would be that she read your diary.
If The Last Day met your book, she would at first be shy and awkward, but then sidle close and murmur “I love your tattoo.”
If The Last Day were a last meal, she would be a 49er Roll.
If The Last Day were a death bed injunction, it would be from a mother to her oldest daughter, passed down in this winding way over two continents and more than 500 years. Having dismissed all other witnesses, the dying woman will whisper hoarsely into her kneeling daughter’s ear, “In the back of my closet, tucked behind my Fluevog boots, you will find an ebony box. Inside, you will discover a mortar and pestle, an ancient book about botanicals, and a hollow amethyst ring.”
Kim Magowan is the author of the novel The Light Source and three previous short story collections: Don’t Take This the Wrong Way, co-authored with Michelle Ross, How Far I’ve Come, and Undoing (2018), which won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Her stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf’s Top 50. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief and Fiction Editor of Pithead Chapel. She lives in San Francisco with her family and teaches in the English Department of Mills College at Northeastern University.
Buy The Last Day here.