Fiction

Everyone knew the housing projects had rats, but when Liliya first saw one she was lying on her mattress on the floor, looking at her phone until a sudden, furtive movement caught her eye. The rat was only a few…

Shuko had such an imagination, even for a child, that no one paid attention to her remarkably intuitive understanding of the new species, not when she woke up screaming from nightmares in sweaty sheets, and not when she flat-out refused…

The glittering sphere lives in the top drawer of Lela’s dresser. Sometimes she takes the ball and rolls it between her palms, and when she does her parents’ voices float forth. She rations these messages carefully, knowing there will never…

We watch the neighbors and the high schoolers as we sip cold gin at the window. There’s the widow from the other side of the loop who chuckles while she takes an old Playgirl calendar and a paperback of Vixens…

It was a game some of us played during recess, hidden behind a corner from the supervision of a teacher. We took turns. The person to depart would take in a deep breath and hold it, standing against a wall…

Though La Niña always giggled at the word, enchanted by its rhythm, it didn’t take long for her to understand: not everything in America was wonderful. Mami had made sure of that—warning her about guns, about the way even little…

Our Lady’s journey began, as it did each year—even in our time—at the chapel of our village of Arossim, and would move from there to each house in the village. Our Lady was encased in a tiny wooden chamber, for…

When our time zones cooperate, I talk to Savion on the phone. I am, as he is, on the lookout for his mother, however dire our chances might be of encountering her. He has often shown me photos, since my…

She was no flapper. Although she could see flapping from here, what with Sara’s daughter’s leather miniskirt dangling fringe on her thigh. She gave the fringe a shake and absorbed the crowded bar, the packed dance floor, the DJ spinning…

Drawing from memory is acceptable, Hao said. I once went on a trip with my late wife. We went to Norway because she wanted to see whales and I regretted not taking any photos. But many years later, I drew…

In the time between emptying, the baby’s mother curled atop the spare mattress in the baby’s would-be room. The couple had bought two mattresses from a motel’s going-out-of-business sale—a king for the master bedroom, a full for the spare. They’d…

Because we had, during previous hang-outs in bars, gotten thoroughly obliterated drinking beer after beer, and because we had drunkenly parsed the emo-pop/punk divide and the boys had gotten into a good natured emo-pop/punk fight that soured, and because they’d…