I squeezed the trigger, and another steel beer can wobbled off the fence post with the dull ping of a shiny copper BB. Cocking the gun again, I heard Monkey Tail and Cookie far off. Their sounds came at me slowly, in waves, like an echo. That meant Lonny was on his way. When you…
Poland, 1920 In darkness they at last reach the bridge at B—, which the retreating Poles in their fury have dynamited. Undaunted, the division commander consults his maps by lamplight and gives the order: "We will wade across." Horses, creaking carts, tachankas—the long column streams down the bank and plunges headlong into the black,…
A girth for pack or saddle; a tight grip; a thing done with ease; a certainty to happen. —Webster’s for cinch Two years had slipped by since Cinch moved into the interior to be closer to the projects where he did most of his work, but mostly Cinch was here because this was where he…
Sasha wished that she would never have to see Boshen again after this trip. She ran to the bathroom the moment they entered the McDonald’s, leaving him to order for them both. He had suggested a good meal in Chinatown, and she had refused. She wanted to see downtown Chicago before going to the clinic…
Whenever I remember Lin, I think of taxicabs. We spent so much of our time sitting in the back of one, somewhere in Shenzhen—speeding away from the border-crossing station, or returning to it. In my memory it was always a bright morning, sun streaming through the dusty windows, or late at night, our bodies…
Women think they know everything about love and they are wrong. Men think they know nothing about love and they are wrong, too. Books spoil you for love Love spoils you for food Food spoils Reading was the first thing worth leaving home for. I read the way you should never love or eat….
A remote white moon was howling down with its man-in-the-moon mouth, and she swung out across the double yellow line to pass an ass-dragging old van—whose driver turned out to be the hero of the story—and we came face-to-face with a Ford pickup. I had time to read the F-O-R-D, time to reflect that the…
i. On the fourth month of the second year of the drought which brought so much despair to our community, the weatherman began to grow his beard. Inconsequential as it might seem to the rest of the world, no event in the annals of our town has been more contentious—except, of course, for the weatherman’s…
The neighborhood got its first dose of Qamar the summer of her ninth birthday, when she sat on the rooftop of her Alexandria apartment building for ten days and waited for the moon to come down. She did it for her neighbor Metwalli; he promised he’d be hers forever if she only brought him the…
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