Anatomy of a Botched Assimilation
Jesus Quintero
In 1986 we moved from Linda, California, where I went to Cedar Lane School with all the migrant children, to the neighboring town of Olivehurst, where I would go to school with the whites.
Purple Ribbon
Bri Stoever
“My wife will be home soon.”
“Don’t worry about her.” She tosses her long ebony hair over her shoulder, trying to hook her bra. He feels like he should help her, but the paranoia keeps him at bay. Every car that trots up the road sounds like the slamming front door. Each time a headlight passes the window like a helicopter searchlight, his heart seizes.
meditations in an emergency
Edward Smallfield
1 red cabbage sauerkraut with ginger on a hot dog at a ballgame
2 only the imagination is real
Interrupting a Roadside Memorial
Rebeca Abidail Flores
When Rosa and Maria first arrived, the candles were already lit and in rows of one red, one white, one red, one white, all with the sticker of La Virgen de Guadalupe facing the street. There was a small altar set up on the chain-link fence near the railroad tracks.
The Snow Globe
Curt Saltzman
Dad and I were working the Rotary Club booth that year at the Halloween fair. We’d curtained off a space in the rear of the booth and taped a cardboard sign I’d stenciled with the words “JACK’S DIME FORTUNES” to an upright.
Excerpt from The Ghost in the Mill
Doina Ruști
Translated by Ileana Marin
I. The Secret Life of Adela Nicolescu
1. Last year, sometime in November, I noticed the novel in the window of the Sadoveanu bookstore. It stood out because of the big Arial letters of its title: The Secret Life of Adela Nicolescu Told by Florian Pavel.
Mary Oliver Is Dead
Kristin Fogdall
and I want to know
did she ever watch the gulls at Race Point hang
on nothing but invention,
moving a little up,
a little down,
strung on thread,
Taking Flight from the Self: An Introduction to The Collected Writings on Aporia Francesco
The work of the critic is often relegated to criticism in the most literal sense—which is to say negativity—and it is a rare treat to engage in true praise. It reminds one why one set out to be a critic in the first place: for the love and admiration one feels for great art.
mistakes, a bracelet
Valerie Coulton
red & red’s friends
walk into a bar
this was when bars were still open
you know
but that’s not really important
or maybe it’s kind of important
My character
Valerie Coulton
My character never slept in the street by the Chinese gate.
My character had inconsistent handwriting and a scribbled signature, like a hieroglyph.
The Looking Glass on East Tenth
Isabella Rae Barrengos
My bedroom window served as a looking glass into my neighbor’s apartment on East Tenth. From my room, I could see into her kitchen, and from her kitchen, she could see into me.
Her Name is Sonora
Nadia Villafuerte
Translated by Pennell Somsen
It was as if the mirror reflected only my image and not hers. We shared a room, but my imprint was everywhere: my clothes, my dressing table with sprays, my bottles of glitter and perfume, my calendar attached to the wall with thumbtacks.
Inheritances
Monica Macansantos
The night Andrew received his mother’s call, he was unbuttoning his shirt in front of his bathroom mirror, savoring the lazy, pleasant buzz that lingered in his head after a night of drinking and sauntering down the warm, noise-filled streets of Makati with friends who could drop everything at a moment’s notice to celebrate his good fortune with him on a Tuesday night.
Blue Eyes: An Excerpt from Another Voice
Gabriela Ruivo Trindade
Translated by Andrew McDougall
Fourth Voice (Maria Filomena)
Estremoz, 3 April 1974
Since my Zé went to war, things have been tough for me. A dizziness in my head I can barely stay on my feet with, an unbearable ringing in my ear.
First we are lost
Peter Grandbois
the yellow jackets buzz about the yard
more and more I find it difficult to go on
my son hit their nest with the lawnmower
days churn through patterns of heat and dust
Pseudokhristos
Kathleen Bryson
The little man in the machine blows a little horn and this will be my last sermon to the lot of you. Artificial intelligence drips through the computer that allows us to peer through the ages, and the little man caught inside blows toot toot.
Immaculate
Immaculate (9×12 Gouache on paper) by Matthew Felix Sun.