I remember the precise moment Titi called me “feita.” It was the third and last day of Mami’s wake and the visitation room was overflowing with guests. I was slouching on a velvet-covered chair with my feet propped on the edge, holding the sign-in book as I read the guests’ names.
Read More...Plunge
Lydia saw the man crouched on the parapet first, and despite being nearly passed out drunk, she shrieked, “That guy! Is he gonna jump?”
Read More...Needy People
The samosa wallah at the street corner is back. His stall now has a blue tarp roof held up on bamboos. When he sees me, he shouts in Hindi, “And, sahab, everything alright?”
“Everything’s great. With you?”
“All fine. Just back from village. Brother’s sons.” He points at the two boys in stained tees hunkered in the small enclosure. With delicate twists of their fingers, they are sealing samosas for frying. The place hums with the scent of salted dough and nigella seeds.
Read More...Recipe for Fidelity
Tanya met the hussy when she picked up Gary for Thursday choir rehearsal. But she came up with her plot a few hours later, as she snapped long strands of spaghetti to fit in their little pot, crumbled ground turkey into bits, and chopped through a fleshy green pepper.
Read More...Spaghetti Head
Behind the K-Mart we went dumpster diving. Not dumpster skimming. When I go dumpster diving I go all the way.
Read More...Ike and Tina, Singing Like They Meaning
After Thursday practice, while the other boys got bored and wet in the showers, four of us hung back in the locker room and choked each other because we didn’t have any money to buy drugs, or anyway any dealers we could trust to not sell us ibuprofen or oregano. It was a game we’d learned in middle school.
Read More...Chapter 1: Gracious Living Without Servants
Not counting the reception after the funeral, this was Juliet’s first party as a widow. As she buttoned her navy linen dress, she knew that every bereaved spouse inched back to life, but few did so at age thirty, with a party in their parents’ living room.
She had put off preparations until the last minute, knowing too much time would lead to reflection, and in seconds she would think away her resolve, tear off the clothes and stay upstairs. Instead of soldiering through, she would give in to the dread that accumulated during the weeks since she had encouraged her parents not to cancel.
Read More...Marital Relations
by Sylvia Otmarsh
When Randall did that thing they say all men do, he always tried to hide it. He’d only do it when Susan was safely out of the house for a good spell: at her book club or her mother’s house in Montclair. She assumed this was because he needed a certain amount of time for his endeavors—whatever they were.
Write a Letter
by Bethany Champagne
you should write letters to the person who lives in
the apartment next to yours telling them how lonely
you feel,
separated,
as you are,
by the steel and concrete and plaster.
how many nights you lie awake thinking
about clawing through the walls until your hands are
bloody and raw. just to remove the barrier. just to be
closer.
Tighty-Whitie Deep Sea Divers
I was three years old and my new baby brother Daniel was dressed in a white christening gown, way too big for him, that contrasted against a black-leather reading chair in our living room. Daniel slouched left or right every time my father let go of him. It seems he didn’t want to, or couldn’t, sit up straight in the chair.
Read More...Resurrect
“It’s okay, Bud. I’m here. I’m watching,” Glen whispered into his mic. Glen was nervous. He’d seen what could happen when a mission went wrong, and it took all the strength of his years of training to speak his words encouragingly, so that his partner on the other end of the link would be sure to stay calm and focused.
Read More...Stripped
For most of my life, all I had was suspicion. But then I came home one afternoon and checked our answering machine, and it was blinking so I pushed what I thought was PLAY, but the machine was brand new and I’d pushed the wrong button—or my dad had when he’d been in our house having sex with the only girl I’ve ever been in love with.
Read More...