Fiction

Dad’s Just a Number

Hello! I am 5 feet 11 inches and have a medium build. I have dark brown hair and blue eyes. My skin color is pale. My mother’s ethnic origin is Belgian, my father’s ethnic origin is Polish and French. My racial color code as established by the Chicago Bank of Life is white. I am…

Taxidermy

Afterward, Eva turns her face to the wall and falls asleep immediately, smacking her lips like a newborn. Her husband and I are left alone, wide awake and clueless about what to do with our naked bodies. He fondles his half-limp dick underneath the blanket. His arm is thrusting mechanically, without much enthusiasm or hope….

Extremities

The dissector instructed us to identify the tympanic membrane, a thin connective tissue that carried vibrations into the inner ear. Daniel and his partner Julie were on the cadaver’s left, and I was on the right. “Did you find it?” I asked them. I was lost, as usual, and disgusted. Each day after anatomy class,…

In the Flesh, We Shone

They met at a dinner party. She was young and blond. He, tall, dark, and dead. Seated beside him, she found it hard to stop watching his pale, veined fingers stroke the fabric of his placemat. She only knew her aunt here whereas he seemed a friend to most. Across the table, a mousy guy…

Palau

I met my wife in Palau. Here’s how you find Palau on a map: Look for San Juan, then look for the farthest point from it. It was a dive trip my father had promised when I started college. By the time I had my BA, we hadn’t spoken for nearly ten months. Still, I…

Safe Home

Cuauh always greases the landings. If the winds are strong, he lands in the desert north of Obregon, on a sand strip outlined by burning tar barrels, desert oak, and split saguaro cut lengthwise to catch the neon sun. But if the winds are calm, Cuauh lumbers his aircraft, an aging M20J, onto a neighborhood…