Fiction
Scorching, Smokeless Fire
Everything started when we were thirteen—young and learning to love the womanhood that our mothers forced upon us.
Blue Mohawk
The sound of the electric bell announces me entering the Bodega. Spanish music plays low from a boombox duct taped to the top of the wall. The skinny kid I call blue Mohawk sits hunched over a stool behind the counter below a neon blue and gold Lowenbrau sign. His blue Mohawk like an illuminated […]
The Richmond
Mama and Baba refused to leave our foggy little Chinese hamlet. Although they had traveled across the world, now they would no longer travel east of Arguello Boulevard.
The Bereavers at the Crying Competition
The MC introduced each contestant, and at the end, said that that year’s grief counselors in black would like to be called the Bereavers. He mispronounced it as the Beliebers, and the audience laughed, because they are American, and have no idea what Bereaver could mean.
Where is the Sun?
Naomi woke up at dusk. The sky was on fire—all shades of orange and pink with thin strips of blue throughout. A sunset like this used to be few and far between, but recently every single one looked this way—like the last sunset ever. She opened her bedroom window. Having spent the day pent up […]
Half Life
2016 The burial is a quiet one, mum made sure. Only 7 people are in attendance—dad, mum, Iye (dad’s mother), Tochi (Olivia’s husband), our parish priest, Aituari (Olivia’s best friend) and me. Sadness sags loosely around all of us, in our eyes, from our black clothes. Dad is holding my mum tightly around her waist […]
The Other Mother
Patti never mentioned her own daughter. I realized she was a little broken too, like the rest of us. She had a tender point she hid from us, from me: the enemies.
Making Friends with Elephants
A Emu is saved from drowning by an elephant, then he and his girlfriend Gotva wonder the jungle fighting evil.
The Dead and Other Unchosen Things
We only used this table for special occasions, for Christmas and New Year’s and birthdays. And for the dead.
belowground
Emmitt is kidnapped and imprisoned by the Aboveground military police while stealing water for his Belowground community, and his four best friends use ancestral magic to try and rescue him.