Melanie met Harriet at a health food store in the cosmetics section. They were both looking at a facial cleanse made from watercress that promised to protect against free radicals and improve skin tone. They began sharing their experiences with organic shampoos and paraffin-free mascara
This is desert now, desert country, red country. Some say you can taste the air, the change, a sort of bitterness, an indescribable flavour. I for one cannot. I see only the slowness of it all, the inevitability. Look. We stand against the wall in
Kuya Edwin and I used to tear shit apart. We did it all the time because he’s my Kuya; my bigger, broad-shouldered, older brother who showed me how to survive while being brown in New Jersey. Edwin taught little me how to use my mind
In the early morning before fully waking, Mara imagined Miguel, who was one of her mother’s housemates, forcing her to sit on the kitchen stool in her skirt but without any underwear. She held out her small pointy breasts to him, as he reached his
I saw Ronald Reagan curing bad knees in El Salvador. There was this one man my family knew, Berto, who was from a family of bricklayers. Berto’s knees were so bad that one day he went to church and went down to pray and then
There was a rumor that not all the exhibits in the Spokane Memorial Zoo were, well… That somewhere there was an attic, or a supply closet, or an elevator shaft, and in it was somebody’s special project, and if you knew that person, and if
When Coach blew the whistle, along with the rest of the kids, I returned the soccer balls to the rack in the closet, took long gulps from the armory gym’s water fountain, put on my puffy snow jacket, and walked out into the parking lot
The Muslims on our street sang prayers for me. Everyone on Facebook encouraged me to date her: we were both quirky, and though on different continents, we played Scrabble with slang words—me in English and her—also in English. The only person, of course, who had
A couple of Fang’s fingertips are all bloody and he’s waving them around saying, “Put your mouth where your money is, put it here, right here!” and we’re telling him he’s not making sense, but none of us really care about his logic because he’s
Mrs. Shotz had been a ninth grade science teacher for thirty-one years, but she hadn’t been a very good one. She taught at Woodrow Wilson Junior High School, and each morning at 5:40 AM, when she awoke to the waaaang of her alarm, she threw