Fiction

Cookie Monster Shares

Me name Sidney. Me have problem. Ever since me little monster, me love cookie. Me parents cookieholics. Me not have discipline at home. Me parents not pay me attention; all time they eat cookie. Me think that normal. Me sad. Me want to be cool in junior high school, so me bring cookie from home…

Overlong and thus Unsuccessfully Submitted Yelp Review of the Agnes Martin Show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Apr. 24–Sept. 11, 2016) by Anonymous

16 friends 823 reviews *** 5/3/2016 1 check-in “In 1967, just as her art was gaining acclaim, Martin abandoned New York City and her practice in pursuit of silence and solitude, traversing the United States and Canada. Settling on a remote mesa outside Cuba, New Mexico, Martin returned to art-making in 1973.” —Agnes Martin, BCAM,…

Lifestyle Issue

One                         I don’t know what came over me. Why I did it. I panicked. She didn’t threaten me at all. She couldn’t have done so, given her circumstances. I probably posed more of a threat to her than the reverse. But I found myself in an unfamiliar situation. In a scary neighborhood. I didn’t know what…

Stop

Outside the city, lights flash in his rearview mirror. The police car pulls ahead of him and he stops behind it. The white cop emerges and looks angry. Or happy and content. It would not matter. The motorist of color freezes. He tries to avoid the appearance of carrying anything, or of raising his hands….

Immediate Family

Madeline Voltaire (1946–present)   She was an only child, adored by her mother and father, but she was lonely and she vowed, when she married, to have as many children as her body would allow. Madeline had long black hair, so long she could sit on it or wear it piled in thick curls atop…

Mauro and Elena

It’s only six months, the social worker told Mauro. Then you’ll have your daughter home. She said there were far worse places they could send a girl convicted of such a crime. She described the compound as being like a summer camp, a small boarding school in the campo, a retreat even if operated by…

Doorway to Darkness

When I finally returned to Southern California, I expected to find the locals in the grips of apocalyptic fear, arming themselves and venturing out from fortified homes only for the most necessary provisions. The area had recently suffered a brutal terrorist attack, during which over a dozen people were gunned down while attending a retirement…

Some of You

Some of you walked as though you were walking on coals of fire. Some of you as though in the field of arboles you remembered from when you were younger, when your fathers taught you how to pull the chilis from the stem, though there were no stems and you were on lookout for other…