2014 Category
Los Mangles Rojos
Posted on December 16, 2014 Leave a Comment
1. There was a truck, back opened and piled with soiled towels, idling on the narrow stamped cement path. A sour smell of dampness, sweat, and burgeoning mildew – not only the physical truck – impeded his grumbling scooter. It was the same every evening around this time. Thoughtless day laborers, hired to collect the […]
A Dog for Christmas
Posted on December 12, 2014 Leave a Comment
What she remembered distinctly about the fire was the air. That it was embedded with caustic molecules, invisibly smoldering just underneath her nostrils. How that air had shocked her lungs with each breath. And the dog, of course; she remembered the dog. The charred heaps of garbage, the cluttered debris, the murky bits of interior […]
Libera me
Posted on December 5, 2014 Leave a Comment
Late November peppers the sky with cirrus clouds, blackened underneath, and suggestive of cold rain. Rain which may fall sometime soon – but not today – then, presently, a screeching-halt sunset descends, assaults, roads curving into evening, lined with empty see-through buildings illumined by the practiced forlorn of nightfall. How it skulks along the edges […]
The Eighth Sea
Posted on November 13, 2014 Leave a Comment
The eighth sea brims with absurdity, while mangled mangroves just ashore absorb it. The farce exudes itself plainly – though not particularly, in that it is not so recognizable at first. It sinks in, over time, and through the twisted roots coils upward. All the while, underneath, as the eye is unmindful, the core soaks […]
The Village
Posted on October 23, 2014 Leave a Comment
I. There was only a sliver of sunlight remaining in the middle courtyard – really just a sword of uneven brightness across my legs, outspread on the broken concrete. Too tired to get up, but knowing it would soon be dark, I let myself be distracted by the old woman who’d moved in last week […]
The Hair Tie
Posted on October 13, 2014 Leave a Comment
One – If it had snapped – the way those cheaply-made hair ties usually do, in that weak spot where they are joined together – it would have rested as a thin, black ‘S’ in the cracked pavement. It didn’t, though. It slid out of her lanky, slippery hair, bounced off her tote bag, and […]
Is There Dodgeball in Heaven?
Posted on October 9, 2014 Leave a Comment
On Sunday mornings, my mother teaches a C.C.D. class (that’s Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, for all you non-Catholics; not Central City Dump, for anyone who may or may not have attended St. Mary’s C.C.D. anytime between 1977 and 1981) to a group of first graders. They’re a pretty tough crowd. They need a lot of […]
Skylab
Posted on October 1, 2014 Leave a Comment
At this, the end of the world, I feel more English than Zadie Smith – not because of white teeth, but because there is no way to write the stories without insult. Surely there is recognition in every word, written unravelling to rest closest to the truth, otherwise clouded with nostalgia, imagined nuance. The price […]
The First Tree
Posted on September 29, 2014 Leave a Comment
From in between the opened slats of the blinds on my kitchen windows, I can see it. Each autumn, it is the golden harbinger of the coming season of crisp air and darkened evenings. Muted laughter through closed windows as children walk home from school, jackets unzipped. Somnolent bees hovering over brilliant mums, preparing for […]
Rio Grande
Posted on September 3, 2014 2 Comments
Irreparably, autumn deposits itself onto the last days of summer, ombre strands still flying stubbornly, unevenly. Inseparably. Tinged with the imminence of next summer, overwashed neon letters peel and hang ungracefully, yet refulgent, from see-through tops. Shorts, tighter now, look seat-worn, even up against the distance of a cloudless, color-blocked blue sky. Two tiny girls […]
A Girl by the Bridge 
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