The Other Osama
He was born with a silver knife in his mouth. And he was its first victim. —Osama Alomar Inside, the shop was limewashed and long enough to fit…
The Bar at the End of the World
The local news, projected to the bar by way of their staticky, cafeteria tray–sized TV, warned of severe storm conditions, possible flash flooding. That afternoon, the odd car that…
Good New Teeth
The old man woke up screaming. The nurse, asleep in the next room and dreaming of the seaside, heard the scream as a black harpy screeching toward a flock…
The Storming of Forestswarm
He called it the new house, but it was very old. The landlord wouldn’t say exactly. He’d said it was built in 1920 or 1900 or, once, “the late…
Eulogy for Bao Bayun
Today we mourn our great leader. A loss of great consequence: how hungry our stomachs, how boring our stories, how cold our campfires will be. No one knows when…
One Fight after Another
Dolores, nearing the end of her second ambulance shift of the week, sits in a plastic lawn chair outside the back of the fire station. Between calls she often…
The baby was perfect and
the labor nurse said, He’s got hair! while Todd looked between his fingers from across the room and I wiped the fluid glistening off Nicholas’s pink forehead, touched his…
In a Burning Volcano
This is a work of fiction. Raymond and I walked through the prison yard—from the back classroom, along the chain-link fence bordering dirt sports fields, down the long…
Panzanalia
Her mother had become a vegan. She rhymed it with “pagan,” like it was a religion. Which, the daughter thought—she shook the limp herbs dry—it was. They were making…