Collapsing into Zimbabwe

In a smoky bar, an African-American woman performs "Every Seven Minutes," a poem about the incidence of rape. A white male in the audience reacts emotionally to her poem and the two poets begin a collaboration together, performing poems throughout the city of Philadelphia in the 1980s. A lover misunderstands their performances and shoots at the poets, leading one poet to abandon his art. More than a decade later, the African-American woman confronts her former partner about his abandonment of poetry and shoots him, wounding him. She sits in prison, waiting for her trial. The short story, Collapsing Into Zimbabwe, written by Michael Varga was named first prize winner in the annual short story competition in 1995 sponsored by The Toronto Star newspaper.