Fiction

The first thing my mother taught me to say in English: I live on the Main Drain Road. 76894. My mother is in the pistachios. My father is in the almonds. My mother says I was four. She says I went to Señora Espinoza for daycare and I watched a lot of telenovelas, and I…

First things first: I have bad feet. Otherwise this entire incident would never have happened. I prefer not to go into details about the feet—they’re rather intimate parts, don’t you think? Witness foot fetishes, for example. Or the binding of women’s feet in China, for which many cultural reasons have been adduced, but which always…

One man, an Argentinian (but of proud European pedigree), had called her Carmen. He explained that she had a gypsy’s skin. Will you leave me, mi gitanita? Will you take my money when the wind turns, like your storybook kin? He hummed the Habanera for her. You know Carmen, the opera? She had only nodded,…

She hadn’t texted him in three days, which for most people wasn’t long (to be fair, most people never texted their exes at all), but for the two of them, for Brian and Emily, three days was notable, it was out of the ordinary, it was worrying. They’d established a frequency after the initial six-month…

Translated by John Vater   Sadiq Miyan managed to restrain himself at first, but then couldn’t hold himself back any longer. There it stood: a completely new bicycle, abandoned—without even a lock to guard it! Sadiq Miyan cast a quick glance around him, then ran his hand over the bike’s glittering handle, as if caressing…

He’s been blacklisted four years already when the committee finally calls him to testify. Does that mean he has nothing to lose? There’s always more they can take from you, even if your name is Zero. Dignity, conscience, honor. Maybe he can live without those things, but they can’t have my balls, he tells his…

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…

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,…

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…