“For decades, scientists and staff at the site experimented with new kinds of nuclear reactors, advanced rocket systems, and futuristic weapons. While this research resulted in scientific advancements, it also left behind a legacy of radioactive and chemical contamination both on the property and in nearby communities according to multiple studies and investigations…Los Angeles County…
I had a boyfriend, sort of, a med student who spent his nights studying at the coffee shop where I worked. He always sat at the table closest to the counter, several books splayed open in a horseshoe around him, so everyone standing in line to order could see what he was working on. Most…
My sister’s body was found twelve days after her birthday, which was the last time I’d seen her. The silence of the interval was nothing extraordinary; we didn’t have reason to speak, and the older we got, the more reason we needed. Our family, like any other, had a certain tension built into it. Falling-outs…
Cañon City was not a city. It was a small, gossiping, high-security town in Colorado’s high desert, bordered to the west by the Sawatch Range. A home rule municipality boasting thirteen prisons and fifty churches, its ten thousand people—one fifth of them locked up—governed themselves as they saw fit and thrived on the stories, true…
There were two other Asian woman–white man couples at the animal shelter—two in addition to Sam and me, that is. They stood at the same windows, peering at the same dogs, and pressing their fingers on glass. They spent time in the kitten rooms like we had. I wondered if the kittens could tell the…
The first time I was called a nigger we were orbiting a planet of alien hostiles on a tactical base called Charity. Our last campaign had been successful—we’d mowed down our enemies, trampled their armored corpses, captured their flag. The carbine pulse rifle was a song bird in my hands. “Good game,” I said, scanning…
There are still bars—open and around, hallelujah. None of them serve food. Not since the Celestial Phenomenatic rains, flooding, ruin. Drinks only. But no garnish. No lemons, limes, olives, cherries. Garnish is extinct. Because, although it is neither filling nor delicious, it’s food. Nine&ahalf buys them two beers and a cup of coffee—black, no milk…
Now that Mama was sick it was just him and the old man running the house and things weren’t going too well. It wasn’t just that the dishes were unwashed and his clothes were always dirty; it was as if a dark fog had descended on them all ever since Mama had given birth to…
Dr. Burton was having a no-good, very bad day, and I was more than a little proud of my role in it. I watched from the eaves of her beamed kitchen as she burned her coffee and then her tongue, cussing a little, and then as her boys—all five of them—fought her requests, demands, and…
Winter 2013-14 - Print