The first time I saw Kemi she was causing a scene. Everyone stopped to watch—the boarding house staff, the students they were checking in, and the parents carrying luggage into the hostels. In front of the hostels, in the open space where cars were parked, a woman stood by the back door of a shiny…
The other night at a party in Westlake Hills, just outside of Austin, I stepped outside to get some air and found a group of my old friends sitting around a fire pit in the backyard, smoking cigarettes. It was a strange sight, not only because I hadn’t seen most of these people in several…
We woke to a world opened up in holes, a dawn still stained with spots of night. Stoking the stove, we stood, went to the window, blew out the lamp to better see: out there, beneath the barely brightening sky, the snow-smooth pasture somehow gone guttate while we slept. Letting out the dog, we lingered…
Russell woke, his mouth dry and sour with fear. His back ached and his hands were stiff, raw, the blood swelling in his knuckles like he was young again, fighting again. A warm wind came from the window, pure and solitary-smelling in the way of predawn hours. And he could smell the jasmine that Alice…
When she arrived at Grisha’s, Marina heard the fierce sound of clanging cookware. This meant Aneta was angry. These days, Aneta was always angry. To hear her tell it, she hated being a home attendant, detested old people and their smell, found Grisha a dissolute lecher and couldn’t stand dirty Brooklyn sidewalks. Their employer, VIP…
It took three weeks for Gwaza to disintegrate. Even after he was gone, his smell carried in a thick veil of flies, keeping the house door shut and all the windows closed. People walking by on their way to Church carrying gossip, or back from work with roadside onions and Friday night Chicken Licken stopped…
The decision had been made the night before, though I’d played very little part in it. We’d been lying in bed and she’d said it had to be done. And because the day had been long and we were tired and a bit drunk, I thought it might not stick, and hoped it wouldn’t. It…
My twin’s bomb was packed with glass and a virus. His skin grew wet and dark and wouldn’t heal. I stink like meat, he wrote when he could. When it was clear he wasn’t dying, the VA doctors called him a cosmetic fix. Skin grafts, reconstructive surgery. When he recovered enough to make jokes, he…
Dixie Every year at the family reunion—before Cousin Monique comes to your rescue—the uncles sit back in their folding chairs and napkin-necks and ask about your father. They take you in with age-soggy eyes, as you stand before them in a floppy blouson and skirt. You look different now than you did in 1970 or…
No products in the cart.