Jan 18, 2019
Marisa, the Pitch Pine
Didn’t they get it? She was a pitch pine. She would win in the end.
Didn’t they get it? She was a pitch pine. She would win in the end.
Her species procreates through a sacred sermonic skin grafting ritual, but the idea of sex with a teenage human male she found truly grotesque.
“Devilish,” said all of Kharagpur, after the Rosarios and their pig walked in the annual parade. “No pig’s supposed to jump backwards. Or laugh.”
You wanted us to have a baby. I wanted your baby, and also for all the moths in the house to die.
The Big was proof that there was a God, and proof that God did not exist.
There were a number of things that shaped who Simra was. The most important was that she knew how to love a rabbit.
Alfonzo looked aghast, like they were the two most naïve immigrants in the history of New York. “ICE is preparing to break through that door with guns and night vision goggles, maybe even dogs, and you’re worried about the breeze?”
Tony had only gone on, like, seven dates with Josefín and the jodona was already lounging on Magdalena’s couch.
If you’re having a good time it usually means you’re having a bad time, I think. So the opposite has got to be true also.
Look at the ocean, they say. Every road will flood. You will be trapped. Your house will be destroyed. Look at it swell. I’m staying, I say.
Everything started when we were thirteen—young and learning to love the womanhood that our mothers forced upon us.
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 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.
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.
We only used this table for special occasions, for Christmas and New Year’s and birthdays. And for the dead.
The two years after Daniel’s disappearance felt like a decade. My colleagues and students couldn’t decide whether to treat me like a widow or divorcée. Mae treated me like neither.
She whispered his words, trying to rekindle the magical spell Hubert had placed over her mother that day. Ruth hated him for doing what she couldn’t. He left.
“Yes, there are still whales, there are still haddock, crabs, seals. Their hearts beat, muscle and sinew unaltered by steel scale or steam-powered fins. For now, anyway.”
Captains are always making you think you’re secure and happy and then bam, you’re capsizing with an iceberg in your rearview mirror.
