Fiction

The Writing's On the Wall

            And but Tweed was all like, "Yo, you gotta hear this shit -- this shit is stupid!" And Dig's hanging on to his every word, like "Yeah man, give it to me," and I'm just hanging low, leaning over the bar, staring at all these bottles of all this Blue Curacao shit and thinking, man should I do another shot? And Tweed's jabbering away about some cat he knows, "This cap from East New York, this goomba..." But I'm lost, 'cause by this time I'm three sheets to the wind shitfaced.

The Goat

Tope Folarin's debut novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man, is set partly in Utah and partly in Texas, and it is largely based on the author's actual experience as the son of Nigerian immigrants. It is a coming of age story and also an immigrant narrative focusing more on the experience of the first generation American children of Nigerian parents. It is both uplifting and heartbreaking—heartbreaking in the way all immigrant narratives are heartbreaking.

The Girl

“You shall find me again, and you shall lose me…”  - Marcel Schwob, The Book of Monelle

2034

We might be crowded in cells. Who’s to say? There are no walls. No edge to reach. The guards snatch us from the green darkness. The victims wail and plead. When it’s my turn, I hear your voice again: Remember everything and find me.

2007

The Frenchman

After having sex with her husband, Sabi left him in bed for the Frenchman on her laptop. Usually, the wireless connection would buffer halfway into a clip, but tonight the signal was strong. Despite needing to get some rest for her third oncologist appointment, Sabi stayed up the rest of the night. In the morning, she would know if the chemotherapy was working. She didn't want to think about the results of the PET scan or the chemo. She didn't want to brace herself for another assault of fatigue, nausea, constipation, and that damn metallic taste in her mouth.

The Cry

Beverly, a town near Salem, spring 1692. A STRONG GUST of WIND then lights up to see a young girl, ELIZABETH, pacing back and forth behind a meeting hall. Her apron has been intentionally placed on the ground to hide something. The sun hangs late in the day. ELIZABETH seems very aware and disturbed by this.

ELIZABETH

The Corner That Held Them

They were arguing, stupid fight, about if you were color-blind how many colors would you see.  Would there be only black and white?  Or is color-blindness something larger in scope, with many shades of color, only re-assigned to objects differently than others see them?  Listening to them fight, Elaine thought more than once that you could perhaps characterize the two men by the positions they took on the issue.  The one who believed that color-blindness reduces everything to black and white, was he the more romantic one of the two?  Or was he the more classical?&nb

The Clam Shell

“Can anyone guess what caused this boulder to split in two?” Eduardo mumbled through clenched teeth as he rifled through his backpack. From his mouth, a poorly wrapped joint hung above the dusty earth below. 

Our once pasty, now reddening faces turned from our pint-sized tour guide and toward the enormous halves, just centimeters apart from one another. 

“Lightning?” I asked, eager to move on and find refuge from the relentless Bolivian sun. I had already endured enough pain in this desert.

The Best We Can at the Time

Laura’d been taking birth control pills behind her husband’s back, keeping them hidden in the tampons.

She could not articulate why she did not want a child, smiled apologetically when people asked if she and Wyatt were trying, especially people from the campaign. Wyatt was running for state senate on the Republican ticket and, every night, he pressured her.

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