Little brother drinks his neon sadness liquid—no onehas a healthy relationship with Mountain Dew. Large, no ice. That means more pop for his buck. Who knows if he enjoys the stuff anymore. I think it’s less aboutsavoring those extra sips and more about putting offthe empty cup, that undrinkable last bit that rolls around the…
February creeps. The date like a pregnant moon circled round on my calendar. But I do not even know what to wish for. When I tell my oldest friend this, she says, “Sometimes they shit bomb them,” thethey being other inmates; thethem being my father’s kind. She says this from a distance, as if…
If 1 is the name of your best friend from sixth grade,which, for no reason, you remember right now,standing in your socks on the cold tile of the examination room and 2 is finding your car in the parking lot laterand noticing how dirty it has become—the back seat litteredwith plastic wrappers and sales receipts—and…
I remembered that morning because I woke up to such dark. It was my mother who woke me, came into my room, and said I could help earn a little extra money now. She got me a job with her out at the hog farm. She was dressed in comfortable clothes, soft jogging clothes, and…
One thing’s for sure; in the future, the morgues are going to be full of tattoos.It’s going to be more colorful, and easier to manage:“Hey Jeff, move Dolphin-Shoulder-Girl to Tray Seven.”“And get Mr. Flames-On-My-Neck out for the doc.” In Italy the tabloids are talking about the “Ambulenza di Morte,”The Ambulance of Death;a medic who was…
They flew her in from Sweden, and by God, she looked it. Youthful. Leggy. Blond. Eyes like polished stones and features sharp as an army knife. She’d volunteered. And for what? At first I didn’t know. I’d never been to the Galápagos. Hell, never been farther south than Tijuana. Livy and I had stumbled across…
You are your father’s broad back re-writ in small script. Your feet, like his,grasp the soil, confident the planet will never spin too fast to throw you off. I never was so sure. I spent most of my childhood watching the clouds move while I stayed still. In this way I was always an observer….
I arrived on Lopez Island in late October. Earlier that year, my mother had died, and on the ferry crossing from Seattle, I found myself thinking of her. Alive, she had been like adverbs or the color blue, impossible to ignore. I’d hoped that in a new setting she might be less present. Instead, pieces…
translated by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren Unpacking my suitcase, I realized, annoyed, that one of my green socks had been left behind at the beach. At the time, it must have fallen behind the pousada wardrobe, but by now, who knows if it hadn’t become a floor rag, a bag for screws, a flannel scrapto polish furniture?…
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