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Category Archives: Fiction

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Strays

  Tonight, I fly down the middle lane of the 5, no Albertson’s trucks or SUVs forcing me to apply the brake. I turn the sharp corner past Dodger Stadium, where the freeway divides, and drive past Commerce Citadel Outlets, an Assyrian-inspired mecca mall. It

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Human Traffic

When Rupah arrives in London, she is overtaken with gloom. Foreign land again, strange faces, tall people she should appease, an unfamiliar tempo, cold air penetrating her clothes, raindrops running down her thin jacket, a depressing gray light, and the English language that sounds so

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Riding Shotgun

Ralph knew that it wouldn’t last, but he liked how her hair hung blonde to her waist, the bones of her face, all the curves of her. They came together in spouts, at the end of the day, after long talks on the phone about

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Face

The woman I love comes back from the war with part of her face blown off and a surgery scheduled for Tuesday. I get drunk in a hotel room down the street from where she’ll be medevaced tomorrow, then type the words face and reconstructive

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Double You

I decided to make a list of everything I knew about the Jonathans.   The one in the cubicle to my left had glasses and a comb-over. The one in the house across the street was a bit younger, with smaller glasses and darker hair.

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Té de Canela (SPRING 2016 FICTION CONTEST WINNER)

Angela studied her tía Lupe’s brown eyes, noticing how the thin lines around them eased outwards like sun rays. The wrinkles above her forehead, which yesterday cracked and dried her withering skin, now soften and brighten her face. And even though her tía’s eyes drowned

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A Hole in the Wall

There was a hole in the wall. Dad built the place in ’56 and refused to explain it. Even though the gap seemed structurally unsound, I didn’t push the question. Mom placed a vase of sunflowers on the short ledge leaning back into the empty

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Loves You To Death

Turner joked to some that his mother was one of those people incapable of dying, and so (not as a joke) for her eightieth birthday he had it in mind to put her into a retirement home—a place where there was nothing to do, ultimately,

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Rickies

Ricky Q During the earliest years of elementary school, Ricky Q was my second-best friend. Ricky was his nickname; teachers called him Frederick. Joey G lived nearer, right around the corner, so he was my best friend first. Ricky Q lived half a block away