In a back corner of the arcade is a curtained-off private alcove, just big enough for two people to squeeze in side-by-side at the scrolling, blinking altar of the video game cabinet. So close their hips rub against through their jeans, the lump of quarters press-printed in the fabric of their pockets. Digging two fingers […]
There was a hurricane in the yard and a woman in her bed — twisted in the sheets, one sock lost in the duvet. The socks were soft brown, like deli meat, with white grippers pockmarking the bottoms. They were the kind given in hospitals. Was it a simple gallbladder removal, or more sinister, like […]
Our school was a rudimentary rectangular building consisting of three classrooms. Each class had a teacher. The Tigris River passed close behind the school’s large yard, which had no trees and was adjacent to a graveyard. When the weather was good, our noises mixed in with those made by women doing laundry on the shores […]
“Can I have this? It’s in the Goodwill pile.” Micah was pointing to a large frame with a cardboard back, the picture facing him. I knew what it was. It was the man in the field. I hated that one.The picture was propped against an enormous stack of Guinness Books of World Records. I loved […]
Barahona, the streets were paved with bones, but we walked them like they was nothing but brick. The church bells were dull. The walls white and pasty, como pastel de tres leche. We had come to witness our family history, me and Papi and Mami and Natalia. We had come to see for ourselves, the […]
Dave the Terrible never wanted the unholy scepter, but you couldn’t refuse your mother’s dying wish. He hefted the gilt scepter from his nightstand each morning and used it to gaze upon the past and the present and sometimes even the future. It had come with a mist-cloaked fortress in the mountains that had a […]
I was a guest in the palatial country cottage of a Russian Countess while certain financial puzzles were being teased apart in London. A simple rest cure for overtaxed nerves necessitated that I force myself to swallow prescriptions of sea air, the Bolshoi Ballet, and breakfasts in bed of poached Fabergé eggs. And yet this […]
The boy is taken with the forest, the musk of wet bark – bold, consuming, and the sunlight, gold mist stealing through the canopy. When the forest breaks day with its many songs, its chirps, and croaks, it calls to him, like music longing to be heard. Over the roots and through the low-hanging branches, […]
I stopped recycling on the day you left. You were the one who wanted to save the world, not me. I was the anthracite-fueled cynic with a penchant for sullen women with placards and eyes brown and impenetrable as the frozen autumn ground. Your placard read ‘Ozone before Oligarchy’. The details of how we became […]